Now
As he slowly made his way back toward consciousness, Alex became aware of a few things. Firstly, that he was not in his own bed. Secondly, that wherever he was, it was bloody cold. Thirdly, that he was naked. And finally, there were other voices, at least one of which was a woman, and 2 distinct male voices. Both men sounded like Londoners, with a rough Middle class twang to one of them. The other sounded rather more hesitant, leaping on the comments of the lead man as if he didn’t have the confidence to make any of his own. The woman’s voice sounded cold and clipped, businesslike. Alex became aware that if, as he was beginning to suspect, he was waking up after a serious drinking session, then he had possibly spent his money on an unremembered 3-way with a hard-nosed whore and 2 strangers. It was time to take a deep breath (which turned out to be a bad idea as he inhaled an exhilarating mix of stale cigarette smoke and antiseptic), open his eyes, and prepare the excuses. Longer term, it was probably also a good time to cut back on the tequila.
Alex hesitantly opened his eyes. At first he could see nothing; the lights were just too bright, and he let out an involuntary gasp as he quickly clamped his eyes shut again. That little gasp was enough to alert the woman to his awakened state, and he immediately heard her voice by his ear.
“Alex. Alex, are you awake now? Can you hear me Alex?”
The more confident sounding of the two men joined in; “Will he be able to remember anything doctor?”
“Doctor?” Alex mused to himself. Right; it’s definitely time to cut back on the tequila. Shards and fragments of the previous evening were starting to come back to him now. He’d been on a night out with Simon, Claire, Rob, and Andy and a few of the others from work. He had a dim recollection of telling his wife, Joanna, that he’d be back by midnight and that it was going to be a quiet one. Mind you, he also had a dim recollection of being hunched over a toilet in a club and feeling a meaty hand on his shoulder, being spun round, and coming face to face with a bored-looking bouncer enquiring about the provenance of the white powder arranged into 2 neat little lines on the toilet cistern.
Alex assumed he must’ve been arrested, and he thought he could recall being driven in a cramped van by 2 policemen (who, he deduced, must be the two men here now) to the station. He didn’t remember a damn thing after that though. “Presumably I’ve been arrested for drunk and disorderly too. Must’ve been a right state if they’ve had to call the doctor out. Aw Jesus, I’ve been a drunken prick again…” Alex was so busy reflecting on this that he failed to notice, as he cautiously re-opened his eyes, his total absence of hangover.
Prepared for the glare of the lights, he opened his eyes and squinted at the 3 figures gathered round him. As his eyes became accustomed to the halogen blaze, he took in some details of his surroundings. The 3 people were exactly as he had heard; a woman and 2 men. The woman was wearing a white lab coat, carrying a clipboard, wore some very expensive looking glasses, and was slim with long dark hair and, Alex noticed as she opened her mouth to say “Are you alright?” terrible teeth arranged brown and battlement-like in an otherwise kissable mouth. Standing further back from her, on either side of his…bed? Alex was dimly aware that it was more of a gurney than a bed. On either side of whatever it was stood the two policemen. Both were in plain clothes, and both had a bored expression on their faces. The one to the left was in his mid 40s, with lank brown hair, a paunch that indicated a love of cheap and plentiful food, and a roundness of face that indicated the same love of cheap and plentiful lager. He was the source of the days-old tobacco stench, and he chewed on what Alex could only hope was industrial strength mint chewing gum in what the whole room could tell was a vain effort to keep his breath fresh.
The second of the two was younger, perhaps only half the age of the first. He wore his reddish hair rather long and matched it with the faint traces of a beard that one can only imagine was the man’s pride and joy, because there was no other excuse for inflicting such a scarcity of downy fluff on one’s face in the name of having a beard. He was trying to match the other man’s gruff aloofness, though it was pretty easy to tell that, underneath that thin veneer, he was pretty excited to be here. Which worried Alex; why the hell would anyone be excited to wake a drunk and disorderly? Why was he in hospital? Had he choked, rock star-like, on his own vomit through the night? Had he provoked a fight and came out on the losing side? Had the police decided to take out a little anger and frustration on a gibbering drunk?
As Alex ran through those possibilities in his mind, he ruled them out one by one. He couldn’t have choked on vomit, because he didn’t even feel as if he had a hangover, let alone spent the early part of last night drinking a lake of cocktails. And he couldn’t have been beaten up because, sensitive eyes and the stench of someone else’s cig smoke aside, he felt physically fine. Better than ever in fact. Come to think of it, he felt in the best shape he had done for a while. But here he was in a hospital room wearing a pristine blue gown and a puzzled expression. What the hell had happened to put him in hospital?
“Alex, can you tell me what day it is?”
The doctor, now satisfied that Alex was indeed awake and could hear her perfectly well, looked at him expectantly and not unkindly. She had a pen poised over her clipboard as her eyes remained focused on Alex.
“I…well, uhh…well yesterday was Saturday 12th January so I guess today must be Sunday 13th. Look, am I in trouble here?”
As he gave the date, the doctor gave a satisfied little smile and made a little tick on her clipboard. The older of the two policemen rolled his eyes, and the younger was quick to follow him with a tutting noise. Some of the excitement dimmed from his eyes.
“What year Alex? You’ve said its Sunday 13th. What year are we in?”
This was a question that would normally have puzzled Alex. “What year are we in? Jesus, how drunk was I?” he would like to have thought. Instead that question came at about the same time that Alex realised he was not in a hospital. The room he was in was sterile, but the décor wasn’t exactly cheap hospital green and white. The look of the room was functional, yet deliberately expensive; the fittings and furniture were a chrome-and-wood mix. The gurney he was on lay parallel to a man-sized glass box which was strewn with wires and covered in display readouts. The room was windowless, and the air was recycled so he guessed they were also underground. Alex began to scan around the room looking for the confirmation that he didn’t want to find, and found it in the slow and deliberate voice of the younger policemen.
“’Ere, boss. I think he’s figured it out. Looks like ee’s shitting himself.”
The indelicate observation ended with a snorting laugh from both policemen and a look of supreme irritation from the doctor.
“Gentlemen, if you don’t mind! Awakening clients are always in a state of emotional tenderness, and he can do without crude jokes at his expense right now, so will you please be quiet!”
The doctor, or whoever she was, certainly had the bedside manner to go with the teeth. She turned back to Alex and favoured him with an open smile that he rather wished she hadn’t bothered with, and asked him the question again.
Alex answered. The policemen both sighed. The doctor’s smile remained. Under normal circumstances, this would have pleased Alex.
“Alex, do you know where you are?”
Alex looked round at all 3 of them, and reluctantly nodded.
“I think so…is this the Vault?”
The older policeman clapped his hands and exclaimed “Excellent deduction young man! Give that fella a coconut!” This time the doctor rolled her eyes, but was careful to keep her back to the policemen. She took a breath before she answered.
“Yes Alex, you’re in the UK Vault. We’ve just revived your clone, and it’s now Friday 18th April. Alex, its 15 months later than you think it is. That’s because the most recent D-NAM update that we could find dated from last January. Actually, it was the police who provided the D-NAM for us to…”
Alex received the news with a darkening expression and a tightening in his gut. There was pretty much only one reason that he’d find himself in this situation. Quietly he spoke, interrupting the doctor’s explanation.
“I’m dead, aren’t I? I mean…well, the real me.”
The doctor gave another of what she probably thought were her soothing open-mouthed smiles.
“Well, to all intents and purposes Alex, this is the real you. But yes Alex. The original you died 2 days ago. Look, this will all come as a shock to you right now; that’s perfectly normal for any revived clone. You’re bound to feel a sense of confusion and dislocation. Don’t worry; you’ll spend a couple of days here until we’ve got you adjusted back to today’s world.”
“And we will be spending a few hours finding out just why you were adjusted out of it in the first place.” The elder of the two policemen had obviously decided that it was time for him to stamp his authority onto proceedings.
Alex, still bewildered and frightened by this turn of events looked quizzically at the elder policeman. “Wh…what do you mean?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, I must’ve been to a dozen of these revivals and you lot never get any less irritating, d’you know that? I mean you got murdered y’daft bastard. And me and Chris” he indicated the younger policeman, who acknowledged Alex with a mildly embarrassed nod, “are the lucky fellas who get to see if you know who and why.”
Alex shot a panicked look at the doctor. “But…look, I don’t remember what happened 2 days ago. This is…this is some kind of joke. Am I being set up here? Have those bastards at work done this? I don’t have enough money for a clone! This can’t be real…”
The last words came out mixed with the kind of laugh that, had it been anyone other than him producing it, Alex would have filed under “Mental”. Still, he gripped onto the slender hope that he was the target of that special brand of prank involving enormous emotional cruelty that had been so popular in TV shows for the last 50 years.
The elder policeman leant forward and put his face in Alex’s, who made a mental note to remind him to change his brand of chewing gum. “Don’t be so fucking stupid. This is not a game, and we’re not having a laugh. Do you see me smiling? No. Chris isn’t rolling around on the floor in a fit of mirth. Dr Wilson here isn’t mugging to some non-existent bloody camera. You died. The sooner you can deal with that, the sooner me and Chris can talk to you, and the sooner we can get the hell out of here and deal with something other than nursemaiding an open-and-shut case. Are we clear?”
Without waiting for an answer he back away and spoke to Dr Wilson. “Right, we’ll get one of your private rooms set up for interview. We’ll be ready in 10 minutes, by which time I’d like you to have the boy from Brazil here in a more lucid state.” Aware that he was now the focus of three equally quizzical stares, the policeman hesitated for a moment. “What? It was classic film night on BBC4 last night. Come on Chris.” With that, the two men left the room, leaving an irritated Dr Wilson and a bewildered Alex behind them.
“I’m sorry about that Alex. It’s not standard protocol to have anyone other than a doctor present at a revival, but as the police were the ones who provided the D-NAM they insisted. I understand that this is going to be extremely difficult for you. An unexpected death and such a long gap between D-NAM update and revival is pretty unusual these days. But we will be working with you to make sure that you’re ready to be re-introduced into your life, and it’ll be like you never went away.” Dr Wilson offered another of what she probably honestly believed were soothing open mouthed smiles.
“Now then,” she began. Alex recognised that sort of “Now then.” It was the sort of medical phrase that presaged a sensible talking to so that the patient would feel bludgeoned with the feeling that, if they didn’t get better, it was probably due to their own lack of moral fibre. They should also pay attention as there may be a test later. In return, the doctor got the chance to lord it over lesser mortals with their vast reservoirs of knowledge. “You mentioned that you weren’t able to afford a clone. That is perfectly correct. However, there was a provision in your father’s will for a secret trust containing a savings fund. This fund was put towards the purchase of a clone.” She looked up from her notes, “At this point I’m supposed to read out this” she held up a pamphlet “to explain what a secret trust is, but you’re a solicitor I believe, so would we be okay to dispense with that?”
Alex nodded his assent. It appeared that his legal training was very much intact, though the deepening tension fuelled knot forming in his stomach made a tentative suggestion that his emotional state was not all it could have been. The legal training prissily ignored such unpleasantness, and reminded Alex that a secret trust fund was a fund much like any other trust. It was run for the benefit of, well, the beneficiary. The only difference was that, aside from a document lodged with the solicitor or trustee confirming the basic details, there was nothing else to indicate its existence. No probate was involved (which, in these days of cloning technology, was a relief; probate law had gotten rather tricky when faced with the problem of sons suing their fathers for, essentially, not having had the decency to stay dead and allow them time to grieve in peace with their inheritance). And the trustee didn’t even have to notify the beneficiary. This had obviously been the case here.
“Fortunately for you Alex, the fund matured a little less than 1 week ago. The trustee transferred the money from the fund to a “J” Account 3 days ago. You really are a very lucky man Alex.” Lucky. Right. He’d been murdered and he was lucky.
Of course he was.
The gut-knot exploded. Alex snapped his head up from its post-revival loll, eyes blazing at the doctor, whose smile (thankfully) faltered and fell.
“So I’m lucky, is that correct? Tell me doctor; is that a medical definition of ‘luck’? Hm? Some definition that I’ve hitherto been unaware of, where one finds a shit in one’s drink and remarks on ones good fortune? Are you using an archaic term perhaps? Where one can consider to have truly been blessed with good fortune by the gods and shall be henceforth have shreds of ones robe torn away by pilgrims desperate to share in some of that divine favour, because you caught the fucking plague!?”
He should have left it there. Alex could always tell when he was losing his temper because legalese and volume crept into his speech patterns. But, fuck it; he’d been awake scarcely more than a few minutes and had found he had been murdered and resurrected, and was apparently missing a year of his life. He was understandably rather grumpy. And Dr Wilson was the only available target.
“This might be another day in the office to you, but call me old fashioned if I don’t consider being murdered and brought back to life the dictionary definition of ‘lucky’! I died, don’t you get that? Does that mean nothing to you? Have you given up on bothering with empathy? Is it as much trouble as brushing your teeth?! I died! I…I died.”
All of the conflicting powerful emotions that Alex had tried to use up by shouting were bubbling their way out as tears by this point. At the last word Alex spoke, his lungs decided to get in on the action by adding sobs that wracked his whole body. He bowed his head again and wept.
He had died. Someone, for whatever reason, had killed him. That he had no memory of his death was neither here nor there; someone had stolen his life from him. Literally had stolen it; he was apparently now living a year later than his last memories, and although he doubted much of any substance could happen in the space of a year, that was still one year of his life that was gone. Who knows what he and his wife had shared during that time. Had he experienced life-changing events, only to have that taken from him by the most life changing event of all? Would the world be the same?
Dr Wilson sat by his bed, though did not offer a comforting hand or soothing words as he wept. It could be that this was because she was a typical Vault doctor; as professional and efficient and compassionate as a thrown knife. Or it could be that she hadn’t appreciated Alex’s comment about her teeth. Either way though, she remained quiet for a while until the worst of Alex’s sobs had subsided.
“Alex” she began quietly, “It’s alright. It’s alright to cry; you’re experiencing PRS and Post Revival Stress affects every clone to a greater of lesser degree. This is nothing to be ashamed of, so just…just let it all out.”
Maybe she meant well, but the words sounded so stilted coming out of her mouth. Like the sort of thing she had learned by rote for this situation, and chanted as a mantra against crying patients. The lack of empathy in her words only seemed to drive Alex to a fresh bout of tears. Dr Wilson looked on awkwardly, aware that this was her patient but clearly uncomfortable in the midst of such emotion.
At this point the door was flung open to reveal the entirely unwelcome sight of the older of the two policemen.
“I said have him ready in 10 minutes. Sooner we get started, sooner we can finish and the sooner we’ll go.” Seeing Alex slumped on the bed in tears, the policeman rolled his eyes. “Oh for fu…look, doctor; is there anything you can give him to shut him up with that wailing? Me and Chris are due off in a half hour, and we ‘aven’t got a bleedin’ chance of any overtime, so…”
Dr Wilson stood. “Detective Sergeant Marsh. I think you’ll find that the Vault has been most accommodating with your demands so far. Most accommodating. Despite it being against Revival Protocol, we’ve allowed you and your colleague access to Mr Atkinson and we’re allowing you the opportunity to interview him in order to close of the case and allow you to, as you’ve repeatedly put it, ‘Get on with some real work’. However, I am NOT here to be swept aside by silly little men playing silly little games Detective Sergeant! You are a guest in our facility, and things will go at our pace.” She had moved towards DS Marsh during this, and was now face to face with him. Somewhat quieter, but with no less clipped venom, she hissed “Mr Atkinson is extremely upset; he’s going through a lot of stress which is exactly what we would expect from anyone in his situation, and I am not about to allow 2 grubby little legal journeymen make things any worse just so they can get to whatever squalid pub they like to waste their lives in. DO I make myself clear?”
The whole room jumped at the first word of the last sentence, yelled as it was at something like four times the volume of anything else she’d uttered. DS Marsh regarded her calmly. Whether she had lost her temper out of frustration at being in an emotionally charged situation that made her uncomfortable, or whether she was simply looking after the best interests of her patient, she had made it clear that it was her who was in charge of Alex’s immediate destiny. And bearing in mind their location, it looked like DS Marsh had been made undeniably aware of this too.
He looked over at the tear sodden wreck on the bed, sighed, and nodded. “Okay doctor, have it your way. I doubt he’s in the right mood anyway. Me and Chris will wait outside. Come and tell us when you’re done, and we can take him through for interview.” He paused, glanced over at Alex again, and then continued in a surprisingly soft tone “It won’t take long Mr Atkinson; 5 minutes tops, and then we’ll be out of your life and you can get back to living it, okay?” Alex looked up and through blurry vision saw Marsh standing by his bed, and didn’t see the smile he had offered. He nodded, and bowed his head in what was a rather belated effort to hide both tears and shame at his emotional state from the policeman.
“We’ll be a couple of hours here Detective Sergeant” said Dr Wilson, who had moved to the door and was gesturing for Marsh to leave as she spoke. “Alex will be ready when he’s ready, and not before.” Marsh left, and the doctor closed the door behind him.
“Sorry about that Alex. Now then, where were we?”
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As it was, Alex spent three hours with Dr Wilson. She went through the chronology of what had happened to him; the secret trust set up by his father was expanded upon. His murder was, to her knowledge, random and motiveless though the two policemen would doubtless tell him more later. His revival was put into doubt for a day as he hadn’t made any D-NAM contributions to the Vault, but their access to pretty much every database that both the company and the government use dug out his DNA swab taken during his inglorious arrest. Despite having already experienced the not altogether wonderful news of having been murdered, Alex had rather hoped that his memory of a squalid little arrest for bunging half a gram of cocaine and Harpic up his nose was as illusory as his death had turned out to be. Whilst he had began to accept the implications of his cloning, he had a harder time reconciling himself to whatever impulses had led him to almost risk his career on a weekend drugs binge.
Throughout the hours, Alex grew gradually calmer and less likely to burst into tears at subjects as diverse as the immortality of the human soul, and what kind of cereal he would be getting served during his few days of re-orientation. The former stemmed from Dr Wilson’s brief mention of The Church of the Immortal Soul, or The Immortals as they called themselves. They were regarded by damned near every faith on the planet as a fringe cult, yet Alex vaguely remembered reading something about how they had attracted members who had professed Mohammed, Moses, and Jesus Christ as their prophets. He had never really concerned himself too much with them, being as they were a cult that had started and spread with the advent of cloning. He couldn’t remember a huge amount concerning their faith, but made a mental note to pay really close attention to the re-orientation lecture on the subject. What he could remember involved less of the “Coffee mornings and biscuits” school of religion and more of the “Anyone standing in the way of God’s unstoppable Will shall find themselves dead in the name of His love” college of thinking.
Even as Dr Wilson delivered what was effectively a well delivered monologue punctuated with sobs, Alex’s mind had decided that enough was enough, and he needed to pull himself together and snap out of it! This was a way of thinking that was a gift from his mother. As he busied himself on snapping out of it he didn’t really have time to stop and think that it was his parents who were helping him survive his death and resurrection with their legacy apiece of a cloned body thanks to one and almost infinite self loathing because of the other. Of course, even if he’d had the time he wouldn’t have bothered. Alex rarely thought about his parents (and, he guessed, nothing would have really happened in a year to change that. Except for the clone of course). On the occasions that he did, he thought of a father who loved him in his fashion and a mother whom Alex hated in pretty much every other fashion. And then he started to feel like storm clouds were gathering in his brain, so he moved onto other subjects that made him feel less like dealing with the conflicting emotions in him by shouting at someone, and more like having a couple of drinks with Joanna and letting the day slide off him.
Alex asked about Joanna about 20 minutes into Dr Wilson’s mini-lecture. Thoughts of his wife had first occurred to him about 10 minutes in, but he spent the other 10 dealing with the guilt of not having thought of her immediately. Dr Wilson banished a momentary look of discomfort (which Alex took to mean that this was indeed a lecture she’d delivered many times before, and was probably on autopilot before the interruption) and explained that as his next of kin, his wife had already been informed of the revival. However, protocol dictated that they could not see one another until his reorientation was complete. Alex asked whom else had been informed of his revival, and was met with the answer that only next of kin are informed of revivals. “After all,” she explained, “what with the possibility of lawsuits from disappointed offspring, the Immortals, and the amount of money usually involved when a clone is revived,” Alex could’ve sworn she had enunciated ‘usually’ more than he’d have liked. “then it’s no surprise that our clients prefer some privacy.”
She offered another smile, natural for her but incongruous to Alex who could really have done without such a blunt assessment of the new and exciting hazards his life as a clone might face. After that, Alex offered few interruptions and allowed Dr Wilson to continue uninterrupted save for a few awkward pauses as the last of Alex’s emotional trauma was tearfully and tightly packaged away and consigned to the “Do NOT touch!” section of his psyche. By the time three hours had passed, Alex no longer felt he and his sense of what was happening to him were undergoing a minute-by-minute assault. Instead, he was simply numb. Numbness accentuated by spiky motes of anger. Someone had taken his life from him. Then he’d had a year taken from him. It was just too huge to take in, and he felt the mental defences snap into place to protect him from the impact. The numbness began to give way to calculation. “Take yourself out of the equation Alex. Find out why you were murdered. Find out what has happened in that year. You’ll not have lost a thing then, and you can deal with this once you’re ready and armed with everything you need.” It was the same cold rationality that had always insulated him from the implications of his work, and now it was keeping him safe from himself. He needed to know just what had happened, and Dr Wilson’s filled in some blanks on the events of the last year, with the promise of more to come in re-orientation. What he had almost no information on was his death, and he wasn’t going to get any of that from her.
Her talk having drawn to a close, Dr Wilson re-focused her beaming brown smile onto Alex and asked “Have you any questions Alex?” Alex composed himself, and climbed up from the gurney. He sat, legs hanging over the side of it, and looked Dr Wilson in the eye. “Yes Doctor. Could you tell me when I can talk to DS Marsh please?”
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As he sat in the cramped and bare room that VaultTec had given the police to use for getting his statement, Alex was aware of a certain atmosphere. He recalled DS Marsh making some allusion to babysitting him. He’d watched enough piss-poor cop shows on TV to know that this meant that DS Marsh and his young colleague were on what they would doubtless feel to be a rather demeaning task. Alex felt proud that, only a few hours on from being returned from the dead, his brain was already keeping him up to date on the subtext of the situation that he was in. Of course, his brain was helped in this by DS Marsh glowering at Alex like he was a smear of radioactive dogshit as Chris prepared his police-issue mobile phone for the taking of Alex’s statement, but nevertheless, Alex was pleased by his mental alacrity.
He attempted some small talk to try and lighten the oppressive mood within the room. “So,” Alex began, “Do you have to interview many corpses in your line of work then?” Not the most impressive opening gambit, but a one to which Chris responded eagerly. “God no! This is a first for us, innit Sarge? Midweek we’d usually be catching up on bloody paperwork. We jumped at this, didn’t we Sarge?” DS Marsh malignantly regarded Chris from his seat. “The sooner you get that fucking phone ready, the sooner we can start, and the sooner we can get back to some proper work.” Marsh flicked a glance to Alex, as if defying him to mention the contradiction between Chris’ account of how they came to be here, and his own theatrically expressed distaste for having to interview him.
Chris, chastened by his superior’s swift dismissal of his excitement, clumsily fiddled with the buttons on the phone for another half minute which was punctuated with the occasional curse and a quite spectacularly angry “For FUCK’S sake Chris!” from Marsh toward the 30 second mark. Chris meekly sat by Marsh and quietly announced “Ok Sarge, ready when you are.” Marsh nodded to Chris, who pressed a button on the small phone that sat unobtrusively on the side of the small table across which Alex faced the two policemen. A red light blinked to indicate that the audio and visual recording had begun.
“This is DS 4340 Marsh interviewing the newly revived Alexander John Atkinson. Also present is DC 7658 Smith,” Chris gave a nervous smile and a quiet hello at the mention of his name “Interview is being conducted in the offices of the London Vault, the time is now,” Marsh consulted his watch and furrowed his brow as he studied it. “Fuck me; we’ve been here nigh on 4 hours Chris! The time is now 1451 hours. Okay then Mr Atkinson. Do you know why you’re here?”
Alex almost burst out laughing. He held himself back from doing so as he realised that giggling in the face of an almost supernaturally unhappy policeman and his idiot man-child companion was possibly not the best way to get information out of them both as to what happened. Instead, he said “Is this a philosophical question Sergeant? Are you anxious to plumb my newly acquired knowledge about the afterlife? Or should I just enjoy the irony of what you’ve just said and relax?”
Then he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it; the look on Chris’ face was too much, and Alex had always been exactly the kind of smartarse who enjoyed proving his superior intellect.
Rather than the explosion he had expected, Marsh greeted Alex’s slightly hysterical giggling fit with a long and baleful stare. Alex’s laughter died away, and Chris shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The laugh was replaced with stony silence, broken after what seemed like forever by Marsh.
“Chris, I owe you a fiver.” Chris smiled at this, and now it was Alex’s turn to look unsure. “He said you’d laugh first. I said you’d cry. Actually I said you’d wail like a mouse getting raped by an Alsatian. Shall we continue Mr Atkinson?” A suitably chastised Alex nodded.
“Okay then Mr Atkinson, I’ll repeat the question; do you know why you’re here?”
“Well…yes. I mean, I was murdered wasn’t I? A year from now. Well…not from now. From 2 days ago. Sorry; this is a bit confusing for me.”
Marsh maintained his glare. “Yes Mr Atkinson,” he spat, before lying. “I can sympathise with how difficult this all must be for you. Yes, you were murdered 2 days ago in Paki Alley.” Alex winced a little at the casual racism; both his job and his circle of friends demanded an avoidance of bluntly unpleasant racial language. The former because professionalism was required at all times when dealing with the thorny legal topics of keeping Nocts out of the country at all costs. The latter was more to do with the upper-middle class aspirations of pretty much everyone he know.
Marsh noted the wince and continued. “We’ve been able to piece together your movements over the hours leading up to your murder. It seems you left the office in a somewhat downcast mood, although our witness notes that this is ‘nothing special from him’. Marsh looked up from the statement he’d read from. “Probably you were so bloody miserable ‘cos of that rubbish you stuff up your nose. I hope to fucking Christ you got off that stuff this year young man, because if there’s one thing that boils my piss these days it’s watching young bloody idiots using ‘Oh, there’s no real hope for poor lowly us in the future’ as an excuse to sit around and take drugs and do bugger all with their lives.” Curiously, rather than the crescendo of righteous anger that Alex would’ve expected to accompany such a diversion, Marsh dropped his tone and spoke in a just-as-harsh but somehow more conciliatory tone.
“From the office, you proceeded to Tottenham Court Road tube station. You presumably got off at Hendon. Now, at this point most sensible people in London head home via Prothero Gardens, but not you Mr Atkinson. You took a detour through an area renowned for its lack of friendly white faces. What led you to the Alley on your way home? Stopped to buy more drugs?”
“What? No! Look, just what…” Alex was cut off by Chris. “Hey, if your memory is a year old, how d’you know that you weren’t going to buy drugs, eh?” And with that, Chris leant back with the satisfied look of a geek completing computer games on Heroic Setting and basked in the warm glow of his pertinent question. Alex’s voice began to gain in volume as he answered. “I know because that’s the same route I always walk home from work. Every day. Without fail. What time was my body found?”
Chris manfully hid his disappointment as he answered “We got a call at 1933 hours from a Mr Sanjay Singh saying that a white male had been stabbed in the street by another white male. Officers arrived on the scene at 1942 hours. Mr Singh was arrested on suspicion of your murder at 1944 hours, and forensics arrived at 2002 hours. You were identified as the deceased by your wife at 2145”
Jesus…poor Joanna had had to identify his body? He felt a burst of anguish as his imagination forcibly conjured the image of his sobbing wife seeing his broken, dead body. “So…so you’ve got the man that did it then? So…what d’you need me for? You’ve got your man; my last memories are from a year ago. What exactly am I doing here Sergeant?” Marsh, who had been watching Alex’s face throughout his exchange with Chris, leant forward to speak. “So can you confirm, Mr Atkinson that you have no memory of your final moments? You don’t have any information that could help us?”
“I…well, no. Sorry.” Alex held Marsh’s stare for a few moments, and then looked down. “Do you think he did it? The bloke they’ve arrested?” Marsh continued to stare at Alex. “So you don’t have any enemies then Mr Atkinson? You’ve not worked on a deportation that might’ve come back to bite you on the arse? Been involved in some shady dealings? Not shagged anyone’s wife have you?”
The explosion of temper that Alex had expected to happen since he walked into the room finally happened. Except that Alex had expected it to be Marsh shouting at him, not the other way around.
“Listen you jumped up fat fuck! Who the bloody the hell d’you think you are making accusations like that? Does your sordid little mind just conjure these up, or does Police school teach you how to act like an arsehole? No, Detective Sergeant, I haven’t deported any gangsters! Despite what you might think of me, I haven’t done any shady dealings. I didn’t go there to buy drugs, and I have not shagged anyone’s wife other than my own! Now if it’s all the same to you I think I’d like to end the interview right now!”
Alex was on his feet by this time, getting his face right into that of Marsh as he yelled at him. Satisfyingly, at one point a fleck of saliva flew from Alex’s mouth and spattered against the Marsh’s cheek. He ended his rant, eyes wild and cheeks flushed. Chris had shrunk back in his seat and was regarding the scene as a very self aware rabbit might regard a fight between 2 wolves.
After a moment, Marsh snorted an unexpected little laugh. “Okay, I am satisfied that Mr Atkinson has no information that is of use to us in the investigation of his murder. DC Smith, do you concur?” Chris was startled out of his timidity, and answered with a hesitant “Uh…yeah. Yeah.”
“In that case, I am terminating this interview at, oh let’s call it ten past 3 eh?” And with that surprisingly jovial tone, Marsh switched off the phone’s recorder. “So,” he asked Alex. “Was that the truth then?”
Alex, still standing, sat back in his seat and began to unwind from his unseemly show of anger. He quietly and shamefacedly answered “Yes.”
“Right, well…shame, but there y’go. Chris, get this bloody phone will you?” Marsh rose from his seat and took his coat from the back of it. “We’re sorry to have wasted your time Mr Atkinson. D’you wanna walk with me to the front desk, and we can leave to your re-orientation.” Chris picked up the phone from the small table and put it into his inside jacket pocket, whilst Marsh put his jacket on and then went to the door and opened it.
Alex was a little puzzled by the sudden warmth from Marsh, so he was a little hesitant before joining him outside. Chris followed, and the three of them began their walk through the maze of corridors in the Vault. Alex could see they were on the 28th floor (it was the big number 28 painted at regular intervals along the corridors that tipped him off to this), so they were presumably headed for a lift and then to the ground. From there…well, truth be known Alex wasn’t sure what would happen. He had to go through a few days re-orientation, whatever that entailed. He was also thinking more and more of Joanna; the sooner he can start his re-orientation, the sooner he can finish it and be with her again. Although in his own mind, he’d been away from her for less than 24 hours; it was days since she’d seen him.
“What must she be thinking right now?” were the general thrust of Alex’s aching thoughts of her. She’d seen her husband’s body, had a day or so to grieve, and now she’s been told I’m alive but she can’t see me for a few days? Jesus, this must be awful for her.” Whatever Alex’s many other faults, he loved his wife blindly, unconditionally, and with a depth that always felt unbreakable to them both.
Whilst working himself into the depths of misery by proxy, he hadn’t noticed that they had arrived at a lift. “Here we go. Well? C’mon Chris, press the bloody button!” He turned and smiled at Alex. “And how are we feeling Mr Atkinson? Getting back to reality yet?”
As Marsh asked the question, the section of Alex’s brain that had been screaming at him to pay attention for the past couple of minutes finally made itself heard. “Hang on…Sergeant, why is it a shame that I don’t have any information for you? You’ve got the man who did it, haven’t you?”
Marsh stared hard at Alex. There was an uncomfortable and brooding silence, which deserved better than to be broken by the cheery “ping!” that announced the lift’s arrival. Marsh walked into the lift, still looking at Alex. “C’mon then you two. Are you coming?”
Alex and Chris looked at one another, then joined Marsh in the lift. As the doors closed, Marsh began to speak.
“I’ve been a copper for 20 years now. I love this city y’know? And I want to keep it as clean as we can manage. Checks and balances, that’s how it works. I’ve been a DS for 12 years, and before that I spent 8 on the beat. Heh. That’s why Chris and I got the job of interviewing you. Paki Alley was on my beat for every one of those 8 years, and I know without even looking that you’re rolling your eyes at that, aren’t you? What’s the matter? Don’t get much coarse language in your day to day then? Doth the tongue of the fat fuck offend thee Alex? Heh,” Marsh waved away the beginnings of an apology from Alex. “Yeah, I know Paki Alley. I know that most of the people living there have got roots in India and Bangladesh, so I know how stupid that grubby little name sounds n’all. I know you weren’t going there to buy drugs because I know that every soul who lives where you died is a decent, law abiding citizen. And regardless of whatever kind of racist you might think me to be, I don’t believe for one second that Mr Singh killed you. And it’s a shame, Mr Atkinson, that you can’t give me any more help because with the way things are, helpful and law abiding Mr Singh will shortly be serving at His Majesties Pleasure for your murder.”
“Ping!”
Marsh sighed “So that makes you pretty much useless to me.” The doors opened and the three men stepped out. “Look Alex, I’ll get my number put onto your mobile. Call me if you do remember anything that might be useful. Something about this stinks and it’s not your breath. Come on Chris.”
With that, the two policemen made off down the main corridor to the front security desk leaving Alex in a rather stunned silence. His death, it seemed, had not been the cut and dried affair he’d thought it would be. So what was it?
He stood by the lift in a reverie for some minutes, until a middle aged and moustachioed man in a security uniform approached him. “Ah! The sergeant said you’d be by the lift Mr Atkinson. Would you like to come with me? I’ll take you to your room. There’s a full rundown of your re-orientation and there’ll be a meal in a couple of hours. Would you like to step this way sir?”
Alex, frowning at the interruption in his train of thought, gave a sigh. He wasn’t going to be able to get any more information about why he had been murdered until he could catch up on what had happened in the last year. And for that he would need to speak with Joanna, his friends, and his colleagues at work. For now, he had to endure his re-orientation and put his questions to the back of his mind.
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Army of Me: First chapter
Hello there.
The reason for the lack of updates recently is that I dun been writing a book. I'll put the first four chapters up for your consumption. This is my first real foray into fiction, and as I'm very much a nonfiction writer I know this is probably going to be a bit...well, shit. They're all very much first drafts, so any criticism or suggestions is entirely welcome.
Two days ago
Alex Atkinson had spent the last year watching the tiny kernel of hate that he felt for his job blossom and grow into an all-pervading sense of moral sickness and utter despair. That being the case, it was probably of very little consolation to him that his job was about to get him killed.
To the casual observer of course, there was no hint that they were looking at the features of a doomed man. Quite the opposite, Alex was a tall and strapping fellow in his mid-30s, and one might have thought that the worst care in the world that one could detect on that seemingly open, honest face of his was his receding blonde hairline and thinning scalp. His dark blue eyes were, as is the case in London, watching everything and seeing nothing. No eye contact was made with anyone in the tube carriage. It was full of people who would look at anything except the face of the person near them, although unless they’d brought a newspaper then there would be very little of value to look at, and even then…
Alex was hot and uncomfortable as he stood in the crowded carriage, and it was only the knowledge that he was 3 stops away from home that helped him suppress an irritated sigh as a plump, elderly man forced his way onto the tube at Brent Cross. The TV screens in the carriage continued its usual babble; breathless airheads discussing the minutiae of whichever recycled soap opera plot was currently occupying the hearts and minds of the chav classes. There were human interest stories, which usually consisted of a Z-list celeb (who’d probably begged and pleaded to get the job, hoping to add to their no doubt hopelessly under funded CT Savings Scheme) giving a hushed and reverent narrative over footage of Humanitarian teams picking over the irradiated rubble of Tokyo or Osaka. The shooting of the occasional disfigured survivor always raised a smile from even a jaded audience of tube passengers, so these were on a heavy rotation on the TV screens. And, of course, the ever present and always-shrill public service reminders about Noct Immigrants provided everything a man could want, as long as all he wanted was hysterical hyperbole and fear.
The latest anti-Noct reminder had only started showing a couple of days ago, and so there was more interest than was usual from the passengers. It started out with a shot of a woman’s face, an attractive redhead and probably not even out of her teens. She began talking about how all she wanted was a job. Her voice was joined by another, speaking in a foreign language. Alex could tell that most people on the carriage were unaware that it was Albanian, and that it was echoing the girl’s words. However, the sneers that appeared on the majority of faces at the sound of this second voice indicated firstly that everyone was aware that it was a Noct voice, and secondly that the reaction was the sort of thing that Pavlov would have been deeply impressed with.
The second voice was added to by another, then another and so on. After 20 seconds, one had to struggle to pick out the girl’s voice against a growing roar of different voices and different languages; Alex thought he heard Kiswahili dialects and Urdu mixed up in there, and wondered idly whether or not his own language skills (picked up from 9 years of stilted conversations with sad-eyed Noct Immigrants in pidgin-English and hand gestures) might be enough to get him this sort of work. God knows, there were few enough speakers of Noct languages left in the UK, so there were bound to be at least some jobs going, right? He made a mental note to look into it; if he carried on doing the kind of work he’d been doing over the last 8 or 9 months then he was headed for a nervous breakdown and who knows how many weeks or months out of work and with no financial support. To say nothing of the fact that his job would have gone to someone else if he was absent for more than a week.
The cacophony of voices from the screen increased in pitch and urgency until they were almost unbearable, then just as suddenly died away to leave the girl’s voice loud and clear; “All I want is to work. It’s my right. My birthright. Please, help me find a job.” The girl smiled a comforting, sincere smile whilst looking directly at the camera. Her smiling face filled the screen as an altogether sterner northern male voice added “A job is the birthright of every British citizen. Every job given to a Noct Immigrant robs someone of that right. It could be your wife. Your son. Your sister. Your father. You. Help us to help Britain to stay strong.” By now the smiling face had faded from the screen to be replaced by a telephone number for reporting illegal Nocts that most people knew by heart anyway.
Alex, lost in a daydream where he’d resigned from his current job in the Immigration Law section of Frost, Hutton and Peacock solicitors and was now a well paid and anonymous Noct voiceover in Government announcements barely even registered the end of the announcement and the beginning of the 6 o clock news. He had time to catch the newsreader’s grave tones greet the viewer with news of yet another bombing by Noct terrorists (it had been Paris today) before the tube pulled in to his stop. He pushed his way through the throng of dull-eyed humanity toward the exit, stepped on to the platform, and walked briskly from the station.
As he made his way home from the offices of the law firm where he had worked for just over 9 years, he was lost in a maelstrom of his own thoughts. None of these thoughts were what you might call cheery; he thought about his tattered marriage. He thought about the work colleagues whom he once called friends. He thought about the Anti-Noct rally that was taking place outside Westminster tomorrow that would doubtless see people with whom he could once share a drink and a laugh burning his effigy along with dummies of all the other “Noct lovers” working with or for the UK Vault company. He even thought about just how arrogant that last thought must make him. But mostly he thought about the crushing sense of helplessness and powerlessness that seemed to have consumed his life. It’s a shame that Alex was so intent on his self-indulgent navel-gazing, because if he hadn’t have been, he might have thought a little bit more about the gentleman who had been following him since before he had even caught the tube home.
It was a 15 minute walk from the station to his Flat in North London, but with a shortcut through what had colloquially and mockingly become know as “the Paki maze”, he would be home in 5. His work in Immigration meant that he didn’t have the fear of dark skin and accents that most people in London affected these days. The mockery in the name came from the size of this area of London; less than a few streets large, the maze was a shambolic collection of homes that housed those few people of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi descent who had been able to either convince Immigration officials that they and their parents were British born, or who had been able to bribe them to overlook that they weren’t. It was neglected, overgrown, and occasionally firebombed by thugs agitating for either the British Conservatives or National Labour parties. It made very little difference to the occupants as to who it was. Suffice to say that they had become steadily ghettoised over the previous years, to the extent that they didn’t even notice Alex as he walked through the estate. Noticing people meant that they might notice you, and no-one in the ghetto wanted to be noticed by a white man. You never knew if they might notice your existence and notice that they wanted to make it more difficult.
Alex strode through the quiet streets. There were no children playing; doubtless their parents had dragged them in on seeing his approach. Or maybe they’d all learned his routine, and knew to stay off the street at about 6pm. For all Alex knew, maybe their parents told stories about the white Boogeyman, who patrolled the streets looking for naughty children whom he’d send off to their NCT Homeland where they would be poor(er) and hungry(er) for the rest of their short lives. For whatever reason, there was (as always) no one else on the streets as he walked.
It was to his great surprise, then, that he became aware of another set of footsteps behind him as he walked. This was something completely out of the ordinary; had someone else decided to use his shortcut, emboldened against the deeply held fear of the ghetto’s inhabitants by his presence? After all, 2 white people would surely be safe together against any Asiatic horde (that, at least, was the kind of mindset prevalent these days). The quickening pace of the footsteps trying to catch up to him before he turned the penultimate corner in the ghetto confirmed this in Alex’s mind; whomever it was didn’t want to be out of sight of a countryman in a place like this. A bitter smile formed on his face, but was wiped away quickly as he turned to see which fine example of English Xenophobia was his companion on this daily journey home; an easy one for him, but no doubt clouded with danger in the mind of the average bigot.
He was unsurprised to see that the man approaching him was a picture of uncertainty and nebulous fear. The man stopped momentarily when Alex turned to glance at him, and began to blush slightly beneath his rather waxy looking face. Alex offered him a brief smile, and then turned to continue his journey home. Presumably the smile had comforted and calmed the man a little, as his pace slowed and he merely kept pace with Alex. He indulged himself in another bitter smile; this was what passed for compassion these days. A calming smile to a stranger in fear of a non-existent threat manufactured to keep people distracted and frightened. He shook his head and quietly chuckled at the ludicrousness of it all. The man behind him had picked up his pace once again. Alex guessed that he’d lost his nerve near the end of the estate, and was now making a panicked run for freedom.
“By the end of the evening,” Alex thought “that stupid frightened soul will be telling all of his friends of his close escape from the Paki Maze. Fucker will probably dine out on that story for weeks…”
It was only the sudden and literally breathtaking impact in his lower left back that indicated to Alex that maybe he had guessed wrong about the man losing nerve. He dropped his briefcase in shock, and tried to turn to face the man. His back suddenly radiated an explosive pain as he half turned and saw the man, eyes wild and waxy face flushed and sweating with terror, twist the knife that he’d just thumped into Alex’s back.
Alex reached out and tried to shove the man away from him. The knife was twisted further still and Alex offered a brief and wordless pained contortion of his features as it did so. He dropped to his knees, and the knife was yanked free. With its withdrawal, Alex began to get his breath back. He fell forward and, on all fours, began panting and crying in pain. He again tried to look at his assailant, hoping to plead with him. By now the man’s face had hardened from the panic he had seen earlier, into the wild cast of a man resolved to see an unpleasant task through. The man’s earlier fear had matured into a terrified determination.
Despite the pain it caused him, Alex threw up his hands to try and protect his face as the man closed in and began slashing at Alex’s face. The only effect that had was to irritate the man, and what might have been a quick and relatively easy death for Alex became a minutes-long ordeal of blood, punctured organs, and pain. By the time the man cried out in a mixture of anger and triumph, he had mutilated Alex’s hands to cracked stumps. His face was an eyeless gaping mess of crimson. As he drew his last breath, as the knife hammered through his ribcage and into his heart in what had become a frenzied orgy of stabbing, his lungs were already filling with blood.
As Alex was hacked to death by a stranger on a warm spring evening under a beautiful blue sky, a few frightened people watched uncertainly from behind their drawn curtains. They shrunk back as the killer gave his triumphant bellow. A lifetime of not being seen stood those watching in good stead, for the eyes of the killer didn’t notice any of the figures peeking through windows at the red tableau that he had created. The killer removed a mobile phone from his jacket and, hands shaking, dialled a number. Less than 2 minutes later, a small blue car had arrived. It drove slowly and deliberately to the man who had remained standing by Alex’s body. An observer who’d had the luxury of observing earlier might have noticed his fidgeting refusal to meet the eyes (or approximation thereof) of person nearest to him, and perhaps commented on how it was remarkably similar to Alex’s when on the tube. The car drew to a close and the passenger door was opened. The driver called out to the man, who jumped slightly as if he hadn’t even noticed its arrival. He paused and looked down at Alex’s body, as if the knowledge that he was imminently leaving the scene gave him the courage to do so. He paused like that for a few more moments until his wordless reverie was interrupted by another shout from the driver. At that, the man climbed in, and the car drove off.
It was over an hour before one of the people living in the ghetto called the police. For his troubles, he was immediately arrested as the prime suspect.
The reason for the lack of updates recently is that I dun been writing a book. I'll put the first four chapters up for your consumption. This is my first real foray into fiction, and as I'm very much a nonfiction writer I know this is probably going to be a bit...well, shit. They're all very much first drafts, so any criticism or suggestions is entirely welcome.
Two days ago
Alex Atkinson had spent the last year watching the tiny kernel of hate that he felt for his job blossom and grow into an all-pervading sense of moral sickness and utter despair. That being the case, it was probably of very little consolation to him that his job was about to get him killed.
To the casual observer of course, there was no hint that they were looking at the features of a doomed man. Quite the opposite, Alex was a tall and strapping fellow in his mid-30s, and one might have thought that the worst care in the world that one could detect on that seemingly open, honest face of his was his receding blonde hairline and thinning scalp. His dark blue eyes were, as is the case in London, watching everything and seeing nothing. No eye contact was made with anyone in the tube carriage. It was full of people who would look at anything except the face of the person near them, although unless they’d brought a newspaper then there would be very little of value to look at, and even then…
Alex was hot and uncomfortable as he stood in the crowded carriage, and it was only the knowledge that he was 3 stops away from home that helped him suppress an irritated sigh as a plump, elderly man forced his way onto the tube at Brent Cross. The TV screens in the carriage continued its usual babble; breathless airheads discussing the minutiae of whichever recycled soap opera plot was currently occupying the hearts and minds of the chav classes. There were human interest stories, which usually consisted of a Z-list celeb (who’d probably begged and pleaded to get the job, hoping to add to their no doubt hopelessly under funded CT Savings Scheme) giving a hushed and reverent narrative over footage of Humanitarian teams picking over the irradiated rubble of Tokyo or Osaka. The shooting of the occasional disfigured survivor always raised a smile from even a jaded audience of tube passengers, so these were on a heavy rotation on the TV screens. And, of course, the ever present and always-shrill public service reminders about Noct Immigrants provided everything a man could want, as long as all he wanted was hysterical hyperbole and fear.
The latest anti-Noct reminder had only started showing a couple of days ago, and so there was more interest than was usual from the passengers. It started out with a shot of a woman’s face, an attractive redhead and probably not even out of her teens. She began talking about how all she wanted was a job. Her voice was joined by another, speaking in a foreign language. Alex could tell that most people on the carriage were unaware that it was Albanian, and that it was echoing the girl’s words. However, the sneers that appeared on the majority of faces at the sound of this second voice indicated firstly that everyone was aware that it was a Noct voice, and secondly that the reaction was the sort of thing that Pavlov would have been deeply impressed with.
The second voice was added to by another, then another and so on. After 20 seconds, one had to struggle to pick out the girl’s voice against a growing roar of different voices and different languages; Alex thought he heard Kiswahili dialects and Urdu mixed up in there, and wondered idly whether or not his own language skills (picked up from 9 years of stilted conversations with sad-eyed Noct Immigrants in pidgin-English and hand gestures) might be enough to get him this sort of work. God knows, there were few enough speakers of Noct languages left in the UK, so there were bound to be at least some jobs going, right? He made a mental note to look into it; if he carried on doing the kind of work he’d been doing over the last 8 or 9 months then he was headed for a nervous breakdown and who knows how many weeks or months out of work and with no financial support. To say nothing of the fact that his job would have gone to someone else if he was absent for more than a week.
The cacophony of voices from the screen increased in pitch and urgency until they were almost unbearable, then just as suddenly died away to leave the girl’s voice loud and clear; “All I want is to work. It’s my right. My birthright. Please, help me find a job.” The girl smiled a comforting, sincere smile whilst looking directly at the camera. Her smiling face filled the screen as an altogether sterner northern male voice added “A job is the birthright of every British citizen. Every job given to a Noct Immigrant robs someone of that right. It could be your wife. Your son. Your sister. Your father. You. Help us to help Britain to stay strong.” By now the smiling face had faded from the screen to be replaced by a telephone number for reporting illegal Nocts that most people knew by heart anyway.
Alex, lost in a daydream where he’d resigned from his current job in the Immigration Law section of Frost, Hutton and Peacock solicitors and was now a well paid and anonymous Noct voiceover in Government announcements barely even registered the end of the announcement and the beginning of the 6 o clock news. He had time to catch the newsreader’s grave tones greet the viewer with news of yet another bombing by Noct terrorists (it had been Paris today) before the tube pulled in to his stop. He pushed his way through the throng of dull-eyed humanity toward the exit, stepped on to the platform, and walked briskly from the station.
As he made his way home from the offices of the law firm where he had worked for just over 9 years, he was lost in a maelstrom of his own thoughts. None of these thoughts were what you might call cheery; he thought about his tattered marriage. He thought about the work colleagues whom he once called friends. He thought about the Anti-Noct rally that was taking place outside Westminster tomorrow that would doubtless see people with whom he could once share a drink and a laugh burning his effigy along with dummies of all the other “Noct lovers” working with or for the UK Vault company. He even thought about just how arrogant that last thought must make him. But mostly he thought about the crushing sense of helplessness and powerlessness that seemed to have consumed his life. It’s a shame that Alex was so intent on his self-indulgent navel-gazing, because if he hadn’t have been, he might have thought a little bit more about the gentleman who had been following him since before he had even caught the tube home.
It was a 15 minute walk from the station to his Flat in North London, but with a shortcut through what had colloquially and mockingly become know as “the Paki maze”, he would be home in 5. His work in Immigration meant that he didn’t have the fear of dark skin and accents that most people in London affected these days. The mockery in the name came from the size of this area of London; less than a few streets large, the maze was a shambolic collection of homes that housed those few people of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi descent who had been able to either convince Immigration officials that they and their parents were British born, or who had been able to bribe them to overlook that they weren’t. It was neglected, overgrown, and occasionally firebombed by thugs agitating for either the British Conservatives or National Labour parties. It made very little difference to the occupants as to who it was. Suffice to say that they had become steadily ghettoised over the previous years, to the extent that they didn’t even notice Alex as he walked through the estate. Noticing people meant that they might notice you, and no-one in the ghetto wanted to be noticed by a white man. You never knew if they might notice your existence and notice that they wanted to make it more difficult.
Alex strode through the quiet streets. There were no children playing; doubtless their parents had dragged them in on seeing his approach. Or maybe they’d all learned his routine, and knew to stay off the street at about 6pm. For all Alex knew, maybe their parents told stories about the white Boogeyman, who patrolled the streets looking for naughty children whom he’d send off to their NCT Homeland where they would be poor(er) and hungry(er) for the rest of their short lives. For whatever reason, there was (as always) no one else on the streets as he walked.
It was to his great surprise, then, that he became aware of another set of footsteps behind him as he walked. This was something completely out of the ordinary; had someone else decided to use his shortcut, emboldened against the deeply held fear of the ghetto’s inhabitants by his presence? After all, 2 white people would surely be safe together against any Asiatic horde (that, at least, was the kind of mindset prevalent these days). The quickening pace of the footsteps trying to catch up to him before he turned the penultimate corner in the ghetto confirmed this in Alex’s mind; whomever it was didn’t want to be out of sight of a countryman in a place like this. A bitter smile formed on his face, but was wiped away quickly as he turned to see which fine example of English Xenophobia was his companion on this daily journey home; an easy one for him, but no doubt clouded with danger in the mind of the average bigot.
He was unsurprised to see that the man approaching him was a picture of uncertainty and nebulous fear. The man stopped momentarily when Alex turned to glance at him, and began to blush slightly beneath his rather waxy looking face. Alex offered him a brief smile, and then turned to continue his journey home. Presumably the smile had comforted and calmed the man a little, as his pace slowed and he merely kept pace with Alex. He indulged himself in another bitter smile; this was what passed for compassion these days. A calming smile to a stranger in fear of a non-existent threat manufactured to keep people distracted and frightened. He shook his head and quietly chuckled at the ludicrousness of it all. The man behind him had picked up his pace once again. Alex guessed that he’d lost his nerve near the end of the estate, and was now making a panicked run for freedom.
“By the end of the evening,” Alex thought “that stupid frightened soul will be telling all of his friends of his close escape from the Paki Maze. Fucker will probably dine out on that story for weeks…”
It was only the sudden and literally breathtaking impact in his lower left back that indicated to Alex that maybe he had guessed wrong about the man losing nerve. He dropped his briefcase in shock, and tried to turn to face the man. His back suddenly radiated an explosive pain as he half turned and saw the man, eyes wild and waxy face flushed and sweating with terror, twist the knife that he’d just thumped into Alex’s back.
Alex reached out and tried to shove the man away from him. The knife was twisted further still and Alex offered a brief and wordless pained contortion of his features as it did so. He dropped to his knees, and the knife was yanked free. With its withdrawal, Alex began to get his breath back. He fell forward and, on all fours, began panting and crying in pain. He again tried to look at his assailant, hoping to plead with him. By now the man’s face had hardened from the panic he had seen earlier, into the wild cast of a man resolved to see an unpleasant task through. The man’s earlier fear had matured into a terrified determination.
Despite the pain it caused him, Alex threw up his hands to try and protect his face as the man closed in and began slashing at Alex’s face. The only effect that had was to irritate the man, and what might have been a quick and relatively easy death for Alex became a minutes-long ordeal of blood, punctured organs, and pain. By the time the man cried out in a mixture of anger and triumph, he had mutilated Alex’s hands to cracked stumps. His face was an eyeless gaping mess of crimson. As he drew his last breath, as the knife hammered through his ribcage and into his heart in what had become a frenzied orgy of stabbing, his lungs were already filling with blood.
As Alex was hacked to death by a stranger on a warm spring evening under a beautiful blue sky, a few frightened people watched uncertainly from behind their drawn curtains. They shrunk back as the killer gave his triumphant bellow. A lifetime of not being seen stood those watching in good stead, for the eyes of the killer didn’t notice any of the figures peeking through windows at the red tableau that he had created. The killer removed a mobile phone from his jacket and, hands shaking, dialled a number. Less than 2 minutes later, a small blue car had arrived. It drove slowly and deliberately to the man who had remained standing by Alex’s body. An observer who’d had the luxury of observing earlier might have noticed his fidgeting refusal to meet the eyes (or approximation thereof) of person nearest to him, and perhaps commented on how it was remarkably similar to Alex’s when on the tube. The car drew to a close and the passenger door was opened. The driver called out to the man, who jumped slightly as if he hadn’t even noticed its arrival. He paused and looked down at Alex’s body, as if the knowledge that he was imminently leaving the scene gave him the courage to do so. He paused like that for a few more moments until his wordless reverie was interrupted by another shout from the driver. At that, the man climbed in, and the car drove off.
It was over an hour before one of the people living in the ghetto called the police. For his troubles, he was immediately arrested as the prime suspect.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Conspiracy Theory and Lunacy
Something that has been occupying my thoughts of late is the endless lunacy of those special people who believe that there is a vast, all-encompassing and all powerful conspiracy of shadowy figures that run the world. I've talked about them before and termed them "conspiracy theorists". Last time out I was rather scathing about that broadly defined group. But a few conversations that I've had recently (that, and the excellent program "the conspiracy files") have got me thinking about conspiracy theorists again. Specifically, do any of them actually have a point? And was I wrong to dismiss them en masse?
I'll explain; someone asked me what conspiracies I actually believed in. And I found myself stating that I didn't believe in the official government line about the current Iraq occupation (which, as near as I can make out, is a mish-mash of "it's part of the War on Terror", "It was to stop Saddam getting weapons of Mass Destruction", and "we're improving the life of the people of Iraq"; depending on what day it is, you'll hear a different answer vomiting from the lips of an uncomfortable looking government spokesman) as evidence that I don't unquestioningly believe whatever the official version of events happens to be. I was a little surprised to be told that this shouldn't count as a conspiracy theory because "everyone knows that the Government version is a lie".
Up until then, I'd defined a conspiracy theory as something that differed from an official governmental version of events, and went on to provide it's own explanation of what "really" happened. So if we take the Iraqi land grab as an example, the most commonly accepted conspiracy theory surrounding that one is that the US used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq in order to secure their oil reserves. However, apparently this is not a conspiracy theory and the only reason given for that is because, apparently, everyone knows it. Does that mean then that a conspiracy theory has to be something known only to a select few? Does it have to be something that is rejected by the mainstream in order to qualify? And if that is the case, doesn't that mean I'm entirely correct in dismissing conspiracy theorists as a bunch of burnt out failures who conjure up elaborate fantasies about the way the world works in order to re-assure themselves that they actually have an important part in it?
It took a conversation with a fully fledged conspiracy theorist to demonstrate to me that, in fact, I'd been going about this all wrong. What defines a conspiracy theorist isn't so much their theory, but the way they feel about it. For example, I know of people who believe that JFK was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald (and I count myself among those people). We all have our different theories about how he was killed and who killed him, and we all have differing degrees of evidence to back up our theories. What we don't have is conclusive proof and (most importantly) we acknowledge this. Oh, we can present a case in a convincing manner but the simple fact is that our belief that Oswald didn't kill JFK is just that; a belief. An article of faith. We’ll ask questions of the official version, but we don't try to tell someone that our belief is 100% incontrovertible fact, and it's there that the main difference lies.
In this same conversation, the conspiracy theorist put forward his belief that the world was being run by a group of Occultists who simultaneously had their roots in both the Nazi movement and ancient history. One of the starting points of his rather bizarre belief was that "the Nazis wanted to rule the world and set up a world government". Now this statement rang alarm bells with me (as opposed to his initial belief, which really should have triggered my "this man is a foaming idiot" bell), because being a bit of a History buff, I was under the impression that the Nazis actually opposed any sort of World Government as it was a "Jewish" concept. Basically, a forged document called the Elder Protocols of Zion together with a long-lived conspiracy theory about a mythical group called "The Illuminati" led many anti-Semites to take the view that any world government would be an organisation secretly run by the Jews.
Not only that, but Hitler himself had gone on record as saying that the Reich he wanted to create would be an organisation much like the British Empire. In other words, it would be the dominant influence on global politics, but not the sole influence. Yes, he wanted to dominate Europe, but he and the rest of the Nazi movement saw that European Empire as something to rival the British Empire. So I asked him to provide some evidence for his assertion that the Nazis wanted a world government.
(At this point I should mention that, having read the last 2 paragraphs back to myself, it sounds like I was conversing with someone who is more than a few bricks short of a load. And I would absolutely agree with that assessment.)
He could provide none. And that's fair enough; as I've mentioned, I can't provide huge swathes of evidence for my belief about JFK being killed by someone other than Oswald. So I asked him to confirm that his assertion about Nazis and world government was an article of faith. And he refused. Not in a "I can't do that, and here is some evidence as to why not" way, but in a "I'm going to stamp my feet and hold my breath until I turn blue unless you believe me lalalalalalalalalalaI’mnotlisteninglalalalalalala!" sort of manner.
Obviously, that is just one example from a wide range of conspiracy theorists, and I hope you see the point I'm trying to make. If not, I'll make it explicit; the gentlemen I was talking to was trying to pass off a belief of his as a stone cold, copper-bottomed fact. The only evidence he was able to produce was "because I say so". And it's this feature of conspiracy theory that caused me to view the whole damned lot of them with suspicion.
They claim to be tellers of truth and guardians of the sacred flame of honesty. They claim that they oppose "them", the ones who are lying to you and trying to make you believe lies, and who condemn any who do not swallow their bullshit. Yet when one presses them for evidence, or even simply asks them a question about their pet theory, they will be evasive and dishonest. They will lie to you, try to make you believe their lie, and condemn you if you don't accept it. Worryingly, they don’t seem to see the irony in this.
This is in stark contrast to the type of conspiracy theorist who is actually interested in debate, and who is as honest about the flaws in their theory as they are its strengths. So I've started to differentiate between the two. Those people who will lie to you to try and convince you of their belief, I now term "Conspiraloons". It's a handy term, an accurate one, and it stops me from unfairly lumping in conspiracy theorists with them.
Of course, I say "condemn you". 9 times out of 10, their condemnation takes the form of the kind of insults one heard at school before one actually learned how to debate; "you're so naïve" is a popular retort by the conspiraloon on the back foot. As is "You're one of THEM!", and (for those conspiraloons who are also Bill Hicks fans) "Go back to bed [insert name here]. You just don't know what's really going on". Hardly the scathing wit and rapier-like intellect of someone who has somehow managed to find out the deepest secrets of a pervasive and omnipresent evil conspiracy and share that truth with the world at a risk to his own life and liberty. More the petulance of someone angry that his or her belief isn’t being unquestioningly accepted. And, I would suspect, the bitterness of one who has seen their life turn out rather worse than they were expecting, and wants to blame someone else for it (preferably a worldwide organisation so that they can also feel important) rather than take responsibility for their own poor decisions in life.
I think one of the reasons that I despise these conspiraloons so much is the same one that I abhor organised religion; they claim to be something they're not, and as such they are liars and hypocrites. Actually, conspiraloons share a lot of traits with evangelical Christians; both want everyone to believe what they do, both view their beliefs and faith as something self-evidently factual, both will go to any lengths to avoid honest debate, and both throw monstrous hissy fits whenever one points out a flaw in their statements.
However, the main reason that I have such a problem with them is their effect on honest debate. It's incredibly easy for any government to dismiss any questioning of their official versions, because that questioning is quickly co-opted by conspiraloons and used as part of the basis for their self-important flights of fancy masquerading as fact. Therefore most people, who may have quite reasonable reservations about just how honest their government is, will not take those doubts any further because it will seem to them that the alternative is a belief that the government are actually an secret cult of Sun Worshippers who want to rule in the name of the Elder Gods (a quick side note; every conspiraloon I have ever talked to, without exception, has a belief structure that reads like an HP Lovecraft or Grant Morrison story. Might I suggest these people look up the definitions of "fact" and "fiction"). And who in their right mind wants to believe that?
I think what I'm trying to say (in amongst all the faintly rationalised bile) is that I made a mistake in dismissing any and all people who could be termed "conspiracy theorists", and I would exhort you all to not make that same mistake. Don't dismiss a conspiracy theory out of hand just because of what it is, but treat with disdain those burnouts and failures who want you to accept their beliefs as fact purely to provide some sort of validation for their empty and wasted lives.
I'll explain; someone asked me what conspiracies I actually believed in. And I found myself stating that I didn't believe in the official government line about the current Iraq occupation (which, as near as I can make out, is a mish-mash of "it's part of the War on Terror", "It was to stop Saddam getting weapons of Mass Destruction", and "we're improving the life of the people of Iraq"; depending on what day it is, you'll hear a different answer vomiting from the lips of an uncomfortable looking government spokesman) as evidence that I don't unquestioningly believe whatever the official version of events happens to be. I was a little surprised to be told that this shouldn't count as a conspiracy theory because "everyone knows that the Government version is a lie".
Up until then, I'd defined a conspiracy theory as something that differed from an official governmental version of events, and went on to provide it's own explanation of what "really" happened. So if we take the Iraqi land grab as an example, the most commonly accepted conspiracy theory surrounding that one is that the US used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq in order to secure their oil reserves. However, apparently this is not a conspiracy theory and the only reason given for that is because, apparently, everyone knows it. Does that mean then that a conspiracy theory has to be something known only to a select few? Does it have to be something that is rejected by the mainstream in order to qualify? And if that is the case, doesn't that mean I'm entirely correct in dismissing conspiracy theorists as a bunch of burnt out failures who conjure up elaborate fantasies about the way the world works in order to re-assure themselves that they actually have an important part in it?
It took a conversation with a fully fledged conspiracy theorist to demonstrate to me that, in fact, I'd been going about this all wrong. What defines a conspiracy theorist isn't so much their theory, but the way they feel about it. For example, I know of people who believe that JFK was not killed by Lee Harvey Oswald (and I count myself among those people). We all have our different theories about how he was killed and who killed him, and we all have differing degrees of evidence to back up our theories. What we don't have is conclusive proof and (most importantly) we acknowledge this. Oh, we can present a case in a convincing manner but the simple fact is that our belief that Oswald didn't kill JFK is just that; a belief. An article of faith. We’ll ask questions of the official version, but we don't try to tell someone that our belief is 100% incontrovertible fact, and it's there that the main difference lies.
In this same conversation, the conspiracy theorist put forward his belief that the world was being run by a group of Occultists who simultaneously had their roots in both the Nazi movement and ancient history. One of the starting points of his rather bizarre belief was that "the Nazis wanted to rule the world and set up a world government". Now this statement rang alarm bells with me (as opposed to his initial belief, which really should have triggered my "this man is a foaming idiot" bell), because being a bit of a History buff, I was under the impression that the Nazis actually opposed any sort of World Government as it was a "Jewish" concept. Basically, a forged document called the Elder Protocols of Zion together with a long-lived conspiracy theory about a mythical group called "The Illuminati" led many anti-Semites to take the view that any world government would be an organisation secretly run by the Jews.
Not only that, but Hitler himself had gone on record as saying that the Reich he wanted to create would be an organisation much like the British Empire. In other words, it would be the dominant influence on global politics, but not the sole influence. Yes, he wanted to dominate Europe, but he and the rest of the Nazi movement saw that European Empire as something to rival the British Empire. So I asked him to provide some evidence for his assertion that the Nazis wanted a world government.
(At this point I should mention that, having read the last 2 paragraphs back to myself, it sounds like I was conversing with someone who is more than a few bricks short of a load. And I would absolutely agree with that assessment.)
He could provide none. And that's fair enough; as I've mentioned, I can't provide huge swathes of evidence for my belief about JFK being killed by someone other than Oswald. So I asked him to confirm that his assertion about Nazis and world government was an article of faith. And he refused. Not in a "I can't do that, and here is some evidence as to why not" way, but in a "I'm going to stamp my feet and hold my breath until I turn blue unless you believe me lalalalalalalalalalaI’mnotlisteninglalalalalalala!" sort of manner.
Obviously, that is just one example from a wide range of conspiracy theorists, and I hope you see the point I'm trying to make. If not, I'll make it explicit; the gentlemen I was talking to was trying to pass off a belief of his as a stone cold, copper-bottomed fact. The only evidence he was able to produce was "because I say so". And it's this feature of conspiracy theory that caused me to view the whole damned lot of them with suspicion.
They claim to be tellers of truth and guardians of the sacred flame of honesty. They claim that they oppose "them", the ones who are lying to you and trying to make you believe lies, and who condemn any who do not swallow their bullshit. Yet when one presses them for evidence, or even simply asks them a question about their pet theory, they will be evasive and dishonest. They will lie to you, try to make you believe their lie, and condemn you if you don't accept it. Worryingly, they don’t seem to see the irony in this.
This is in stark contrast to the type of conspiracy theorist who is actually interested in debate, and who is as honest about the flaws in their theory as they are its strengths. So I've started to differentiate between the two. Those people who will lie to you to try and convince you of their belief, I now term "Conspiraloons". It's a handy term, an accurate one, and it stops me from unfairly lumping in conspiracy theorists with them.
Of course, I say "condemn you". 9 times out of 10, their condemnation takes the form of the kind of insults one heard at school before one actually learned how to debate; "you're so naïve" is a popular retort by the conspiraloon on the back foot. As is "You're one of THEM!", and (for those conspiraloons who are also Bill Hicks fans) "Go back to bed [insert name here]. You just don't know what's really going on". Hardly the scathing wit and rapier-like intellect of someone who has somehow managed to find out the deepest secrets of a pervasive and omnipresent evil conspiracy and share that truth with the world at a risk to his own life and liberty. More the petulance of someone angry that his or her belief isn’t being unquestioningly accepted. And, I would suspect, the bitterness of one who has seen their life turn out rather worse than they were expecting, and wants to blame someone else for it (preferably a worldwide organisation so that they can also feel important) rather than take responsibility for their own poor decisions in life.
I think one of the reasons that I despise these conspiraloons so much is the same one that I abhor organised religion; they claim to be something they're not, and as such they are liars and hypocrites. Actually, conspiraloons share a lot of traits with evangelical Christians; both want everyone to believe what they do, both view their beliefs and faith as something self-evidently factual, both will go to any lengths to avoid honest debate, and both throw monstrous hissy fits whenever one points out a flaw in their statements.
However, the main reason that I have such a problem with them is their effect on honest debate. It's incredibly easy for any government to dismiss any questioning of their official versions, because that questioning is quickly co-opted by conspiraloons and used as part of the basis for their self-important flights of fancy masquerading as fact. Therefore most people, who may have quite reasonable reservations about just how honest their government is, will not take those doubts any further because it will seem to them that the alternative is a belief that the government are actually an secret cult of Sun Worshippers who want to rule in the name of the Elder Gods (a quick side note; every conspiraloon I have ever talked to, without exception, has a belief structure that reads like an HP Lovecraft or Grant Morrison story. Might I suggest these people look up the definitions of "fact" and "fiction"). And who in their right mind wants to believe that?
I think what I'm trying to say (in amongst all the faintly rationalised bile) is that I made a mistake in dismissing any and all people who could be termed "conspiracy theorists", and I would exhort you all to not make that same mistake. Don't dismiss a conspiracy theory out of hand just because of what it is, but treat with disdain those burnouts and failures who want you to accept their beliefs as fact purely to provide some sort of validation for their empty and wasted lives.
Wednesday, 21 February 2007
Where are your manners?
One can always tell when one has begun to grow older. Birthdays stop being days of fun and happiness and gradually take on a pervading sense of creeping doom. Christmas becomes the one day of the year you’re not allowed to sleep off your hangover. You start to have to CHOOSE between Friday or Saturday for your big night out. And ones unguarded thoughts and reactions begin to resemble the front page of the Daily Mail.
Take, for example, take my reaction yesterday to a couple of students with no comprehension of “personal space”, “manners” or “blimey, that bloke is starting to look really really pissed off”. I was sat with my wife at a concert hall (and just the beginning of that sentence alone makes me feel like my dad…), and the 4 gentlemen sat in front of me recognised the one sat behind me. So the first one in front leaned across me to shake the hand of the one behind. A little irritating of course, but nothing too troubling. His friend chose to go one step further. The little shit leant across me and offered a very urban hand slap to his friend. Right next to my fucking ear. It sounded like a fleshy gunshot, and my brain immediately clicked into the “young people today, no manners, no manners at all” gear that one seems to get issued with upon hitting 30.
Anyway, after a couple of minutes of silent fuming (another feature of the over 30s, particularly the English I think), I caught myself and realised that my thoughts were churning over in exactly the same way as the blue-rinsed cockwasps that I despise. The main focus of my ire centred around manners. And it does seem these days that we’re subjected to an endless litany of complaints that the manners of people in general today are not nearly as good as the manners of those in the past. And that got me thinking, is this true? Or is it rose-tinted nostalgia? And if it is true, why is this?
I suppose that if we look at things like doffing ones cap to a lady, opening doors for someone, calling a man “sir” as a mode of address, and simple things like “please”, “thank you”, and “excuse me” then our manners compared to, say, 100 years ago are sorely lacking. But on the other hand, when it comes to mortality rates, life expectancy, and instances of repressed men visiting child brothels, we’re somewhat in advance of our forebears.
So whilst the bigger things (lifespan, general health, standard of living) have improved in the UK, it would seem that the smaller things, manners, have taken a hammering. Is there a reason for this? I would say that there is. I think that the use of what we understand as manners has began to decay in this country for a couple of reasons, and the most obvious one of these is fear.
Fear always, always, re-enforced the use of manners. It used to start at school with the liberal use of corporal punishment. Didn’t call your elders “sir” at school? Then you can win, free of charge, a beating from your teacher. Displayed insolence to one of your peers? Then it’s an all-expenses paid beating for you! Didn’t stand whenever a lady (be a teacher, a nurse, or one of the teachers wives) entered the room? Then allow us to present you with the free gift of a beating.
It continued in ones working and social environment (which, being as many children didn’t even get to school, meant that the same social conditioning to good manners occurred no matter where one grew up). Complaining about poor working conditions and wages? Say goodbye to your job and HELLO to destitution and even more abject poverty. Posterity abounds with tales of the lower classes being treated appallingly by the growing middle classes. And if one goes back further, and we look to times when a Lord literally had the power of life and death over his serfs...well, one is much less likely to be singled out for rough treatment if one is unfailingly polite to the Lord and his representatives.
Even if we look at the societies today that are praised for their excellent manners, they are as well mannered due to fear. Singapore and Malaysia are two nations that are routinely praised by tiresome and reactionary old fucks for having beautifully polite young men and women who don’t spit, don’t chew gum, and don’t listen to loud music in public whilst wearing hoodies. And this is true; they don’t. Mainly because of the Draconian laws that fine, imprison, and generally threaten everyone who deviates from these standards of good manners.
(I should interject on my own behalf here; I’m not trying to say that they people should be free to act and behave like Junior Clockwork Oranges. I feel very strongly that manners have a place in society, and an important place at that. However, when I hear all these reedy-voiced horsefuckers saying that we “need to instil some manners into people!”, I can’t help thinking “what, so you want to make people afraid of you? Wow…how very grown up of you.”)
I guess that a big part of the reason that we don’t feel the sense of fear that gave us our manners is the class system, or lack thereof. We no longer feel that we automatically have to show manners to someone for no reason other than they come from a higher social class than us. The class structure of Britain informed a huge part of British life, and whilst I’m not naïve enough to think that it’s died altogether, its stranglehold has gone and with it have gone the good manners and fear so beloved of wrinkled moaners.
(Another brief interjection; I’m inclined to think that the Internet has also contributed to the death of manners. It would be hypocritical in the extreme of me to lament poor manners without acknowledging that I regularly get involved in the kind of petty, vicious, pointless, and hugely satisfying arguments over the internet that would make polite society shit it’s collective nappy in horror. I’m not sure whether the bitchiness that the anonymity of the net has brought about is also affecting the rest of society, but I know that the Internet is no respecter of status or class, and that this equality tends to mean that everyone is fair game in an argument. Despite the efforts of those few laughable brain donors who try to threaten physical violence to the writer of words on a screen.)
So where does that leave us? Well, I do want to see a better mannered society, but I don’t want it to be done by means of keeping the masses afraid of the few. It strikes me that manners should be about mutual respect. Having enough respect for ones fellow man that one automatically treats them with good manners unless one is given reason not to. What’s more, a society where people respect one another would mean that we’d see less crime, fewer headlines claiming that immigrants are going to ruin the country, and a greater sense of personal happiness and sense of security.
As to how this sense of mutual respect can be created…well, I don’t claim to know exactly how that can be done. All I do know is that as long as we have media headlines encouraging us to fear whichever group in society currently have pariah status, and as long as Governments keep trying to maintain their own personal position at the expense of any genuine advances, and as long as war is waged and then justified using religion, and as long as we all remain totally unwilling to take any responsibility for our own lives and actually try to make a difference, then this society will be either scared or ill-mannered or both.
Take, for example, take my reaction yesterday to a couple of students with no comprehension of “personal space”, “manners” or “blimey, that bloke is starting to look really really pissed off”. I was sat with my wife at a concert hall (and just the beginning of that sentence alone makes me feel like my dad…), and the 4 gentlemen sat in front of me recognised the one sat behind me. So the first one in front leaned across me to shake the hand of the one behind. A little irritating of course, but nothing too troubling. His friend chose to go one step further. The little shit leant across me and offered a very urban hand slap to his friend. Right next to my fucking ear. It sounded like a fleshy gunshot, and my brain immediately clicked into the “young people today, no manners, no manners at all” gear that one seems to get issued with upon hitting 30.
Anyway, after a couple of minutes of silent fuming (another feature of the over 30s, particularly the English I think), I caught myself and realised that my thoughts were churning over in exactly the same way as the blue-rinsed cockwasps that I despise. The main focus of my ire centred around manners. And it does seem these days that we’re subjected to an endless litany of complaints that the manners of people in general today are not nearly as good as the manners of those in the past. And that got me thinking, is this true? Or is it rose-tinted nostalgia? And if it is true, why is this?
I suppose that if we look at things like doffing ones cap to a lady, opening doors for someone, calling a man “sir” as a mode of address, and simple things like “please”, “thank you”, and “excuse me” then our manners compared to, say, 100 years ago are sorely lacking. But on the other hand, when it comes to mortality rates, life expectancy, and instances of repressed men visiting child brothels, we’re somewhat in advance of our forebears.
So whilst the bigger things (lifespan, general health, standard of living) have improved in the UK, it would seem that the smaller things, manners, have taken a hammering. Is there a reason for this? I would say that there is. I think that the use of what we understand as manners has began to decay in this country for a couple of reasons, and the most obvious one of these is fear.
Fear always, always, re-enforced the use of manners. It used to start at school with the liberal use of corporal punishment. Didn’t call your elders “sir” at school? Then you can win, free of charge, a beating from your teacher. Displayed insolence to one of your peers? Then it’s an all-expenses paid beating for you! Didn’t stand whenever a lady (be a teacher, a nurse, or one of the teachers wives) entered the room? Then allow us to present you with the free gift of a beating.
It continued in ones working and social environment (which, being as many children didn’t even get to school, meant that the same social conditioning to good manners occurred no matter where one grew up). Complaining about poor working conditions and wages? Say goodbye to your job and HELLO to destitution and even more abject poverty. Posterity abounds with tales of the lower classes being treated appallingly by the growing middle classes. And if one goes back further, and we look to times when a Lord literally had the power of life and death over his serfs...well, one is much less likely to be singled out for rough treatment if one is unfailingly polite to the Lord and his representatives.
Even if we look at the societies today that are praised for their excellent manners, they are as well mannered due to fear. Singapore and Malaysia are two nations that are routinely praised by tiresome and reactionary old fucks for having beautifully polite young men and women who don’t spit, don’t chew gum, and don’t listen to loud music in public whilst wearing hoodies. And this is true; they don’t. Mainly because of the Draconian laws that fine, imprison, and generally threaten everyone who deviates from these standards of good manners.
(I should interject on my own behalf here; I’m not trying to say that they people should be free to act and behave like Junior Clockwork Oranges. I feel very strongly that manners have a place in society, and an important place at that. However, when I hear all these reedy-voiced horsefuckers saying that we “need to instil some manners into people!”, I can’t help thinking “what, so you want to make people afraid of you? Wow…how very grown up of you.”)
I guess that a big part of the reason that we don’t feel the sense of fear that gave us our manners is the class system, or lack thereof. We no longer feel that we automatically have to show manners to someone for no reason other than they come from a higher social class than us. The class structure of Britain informed a huge part of British life, and whilst I’m not naïve enough to think that it’s died altogether, its stranglehold has gone and with it have gone the good manners and fear so beloved of wrinkled moaners.
(Another brief interjection; I’m inclined to think that the Internet has also contributed to the death of manners. It would be hypocritical in the extreme of me to lament poor manners without acknowledging that I regularly get involved in the kind of petty, vicious, pointless, and hugely satisfying arguments over the internet that would make polite society shit it’s collective nappy in horror. I’m not sure whether the bitchiness that the anonymity of the net has brought about is also affecting the rest of society, but I know that the Internet is no respecter of status or class, and that this equality tends to mean that everyone is fair game in an argument. Despite the efforts of those few laughable brain donors who try to threaten physical violence to the writer of words on a screen.)
So where does that leave us? Well, I do want to see a better mannered society, but I don’t want it to be done by means of keeping the masses afraid of the few. It strikes me that manners should be about mutual respect. Having enough respect for ones fellow man that one automatically treats them with good manners unless one is given reason not to. What’s more, a society where people respect one another would mean that we’d see less crime, fewer headlines claiming that immigrants are going to ruin the country, and a greater sense of personal happiness and sense of security.
As to how this sense of mutual respect can be created…well, I don’t claim to know exactly how that can be done. All I do know is that as long as we have media headlines encouraging us to fear whichever group in society currently have pariah status, and as long as Governments keep trying to maintain their own personal position at the expense of any genuine advances, and as long as war is waged and then justified using religion, and as long as we all remain totally unwilling to take any responsibility for our own lives and actually try to make a difference, then this society will be either scared or ill-mannered or both.
Tuesday, 6 February 2007
An etiquette guide
For some time now, I have been pressed by a number of my correspondents to put the definitive guide to slinging shit around the dinner table. It was only after the dinner party hosted by Lord Dangleberry last April that I saw the need for such a document. The party ended somewhat shambolically after Miss Rowena Trackmark indulged in rectal digging before the soup course had been finished, and Sir Timothy Lilyjuice continued hurling his (somewhat sloppy) faeces at guests long after the meal was over.
So then, I am faced with the task of trawling through the various regional variations of shit throwing to put together a unified British etiquette to this much loved and ancient practice. I am indebted to my two young researchers, a Miss Louise Ankelspunk and a Miss Hilary Zeitguest for their efforts in tracking down and collating the various references to shit throwing that are left with us from antiquity.
Before I go further, I should point out that I have decided not to make reference to any of the continental variations of shit throwing. Whilst I have the greatest of respect for the customs of our foreign cousins, I can see no value in their inclusion. It would be impossible, for example, to reconcile the Italian tradition of an after dessert free for all with the more staid (and dare I say it, more proper) Russian stance, whereby only the four most senior guests along with the host are permitted to throw shit, and then only after the final course.
So then, onwards we must go. Firstly, I shall address the point of who may sling their shit. The correct approach is to wait for the host to throw a log before indulging. However, should the host not have flung a turd by the end of dessert, it is acceptable for the gentleman to the right of the host to throw a shit at whoever is sitting to the left of the host.
As to the remainder of the guests, one must of course deal with the thorny subject of female throwing. A number of counties do not allow the fairer sex to enjoy throwing shit, whilst others set a part of the meal aside specifically for the women guests. In order to try and achieve some sort of compromise between all viewpoints, I would suggest that women be allowed to start throwing shit only after their escort flings one of his own. Unescorted ladies (should one be the sort of chap to invite such ladies to a party) must wait until all other ladies and gentlemen present have let loose.
So then, the order of play is to be host, followed by gentlemen, followed by their good ladies, and finally unescorted “ladies”. I must stress that children should not be permitted under any circumstances to join in the flinging. I find that the children (especially the younger boys) produce quite the most horrific stench from their shit and this simply will not do.
We must next address the problem of when in the proceedings the first mud can be thrown. If one divides a party into the arrival and imbibing of a light drink, the soup course, the starter, a refilling of ones drink, the first main course, another refill, the second main course, dessert, coffees, and finally brandy and cigars, then we can have an agreed structure in which to work with. Should ones party not follow such a course, then I hope that this guide is flexible enough for one to make the necessary adjustments.
I would say that it is not proper to throw shit at all until at least the end of the soup course. I realise that in saying this I will cause consternation the length and breadth of Cornwall, but picking shit out of ones soup really is a most unpleasant experience. So the first flinging should most properly be done after the soup. Should the host be serving a fruit starter, then the initial throwing should wait until after the course has been finished by all (not, as is the practice in Norfolk, once the host has finished) and before the plates are cleared away. If a non-fruit starter is chosen, shit may be thrown at any time after grace is said. At this early stage however, the throwing should be restrained to a single log per guest, and the throw should be light and playful rather than with ones full force.
I must interject once more at this point in order to clarify the procedure when drinks are being refilled. One must not under any circumstances throw shit at this point. It really is very bad form to do so as it may unnecessarily cover the butler in waste. As it is universally agreed that this is the one person who should remain untouched by shit, one can see why one must not indulge during refills.
We now move on to the main courses. By this time, I would expect a dinner party to be in full swing and ones guests should have relaxed completely. One should be on ones guard at letting matters degenerate at this point! I recently attended a party in Lanarkshire where the first shit was flung before I had taken a mouthful of my (quite delicious) Venison Foristier, with guests throwing their faeces at each other continually until the second course was cleared away. Whilst I make no direct criticism of this (everyone involved had a marvellous time) such wild abandon is not to everyone’s tastes.
I would therefore propose the following; Flinging should recommence after the host has finished his first course and is satisfied that everyone present is aware of this fact. At this point the main body of shit throwing should commence, but must only last until the last guest has finished eating! At this point everyone should be seated until the second course is served whereupon the shit throwing should resume. Upon finishing the second course, guests should once again be seated until the end of dessert.
I must be very firm about the following point; absolutely no shit should be thrown during dessert. This is a tradition that dates back to the time of William of Orange, when the Catholic populace expressed their silent hopes of rebellion by throwing shit during a dessert in which the Orange fruit featured heavily.
After dessert in concluded, I would suggest a short recess during which guests can use the bowls of warm water provided by the host in conjunction with their napkins to remove the thickest of the shit from their hands. Finally we have the brandy and cigars. By this point, all ladies present will have adjourned to the lounge, leaving the gentlemen to scrape their colons clean of the last of their waste product. This should be smeared in the face of the gentleman to the left (in deference to George II) and upon concluding, the evenings shit throwing is complete.
In finishing, I would like to say that I hope that this guide will be of use for all those thinking of hosting a dinner party and thank you all for your gentle encouragement.
So then, I am faced with the task of trawling through the various regional variations of shit throwing to put together a unified British etiquette to this much loved and ancient practice. I am indebted to my two young researchers, a Miss Louise Ankelspunk and a Miss Hilary Zeitguest for their efforts in tracking down and collating the various references to shit throwing that are left with us from antiquity.
Before I go further, I should point out that I have decided not to make reference to any of the continental variations of shit throwing. Whilst I have the greatest of respect for the customs of our foreign cousins, I can see no value in their inclusion. It would be impossible, for example, to reconcile the Italian tradition of an after dessert free for all with the more staid (and dare I say it, more proper) Russian stance, whereby only the four most senior guests along with the host are permitted to throw shit, and then only after the final course.
So then, onwards we must go. Firstly, I shall address the point of who may sling their shit. The correct approach is to wait for the host to throw a log before indulging. However, should the host not have flung a turd by the end of dessert, it is acceptable for the gentleman to the right of the host to throw a shit at whoever is sitting to the left of the host.
As to the remainder of the guests, one must of course deal with the thorny subject of female throwing. A number of counties do not allow the fairer sex to enjoy throwing shit, whilst others set a part of the meal aside specifically for the women guests. In order to try and achieve some sort of compromise between all viewpoints, I would suggest that women be allowed to start throwing shit only after their escort flings one of his own. Unescorted ladies (should one be the sort of chap to invite such ladies to a party) must wait until all other ladies and gentlemen present have let loose.
So then, the order of play is to be host, followed by gentlemen, followed by their good ladies, and finally unescorted “ladies”. I must stress that children should not be permitted under any circumstances to join in the flinging. I find that the children (especially the younger boys) produce quite the most horrific stench from their shit and this simply will not do.
We must next address the problem of when in the proceedings the first mud can be thrown. If one divides a party into the arrival and imbibing of a light drink, the soup course, the starter, a refilling of ones drink, the first main course, another refill, the second main course, dessert, coffees, and finally brandy and cigars, then we can have an agreed structure in which to work with. Should ones party not follow such a course, then I hope that this guide is flexible enough for one to make the necessary adjustments.
I would say that it is not proper to throw shit at all until at least the end of the soup course. I realise that in saying this I will cause consternation the length and breadth of Cornwall, but picking shit out of ones soup really is a most unpleasant experience. So the first flinging should most properly be done after the soup. Should the host be serving a fruit starter, then the initial throwing should wait until after the course has been finished by all (not, as is the practice in Norfolk, once the host has finished) and before the plates are cleared away. If a non-fruit starter is chosen, shit may be thrown at any time after grace is said. At this early stage however, the throwing should be restrained to a single log per guest, and the throw should be light and playful rather than with ones full force.
I must interject once more at this point in order to clarify the procedure when drinks are being refilled. One must not under any circumstances throw shit at this point. It really is very bad form to do so as it may unnecessarily cover the butler in waste. As it is universally agreed that this is the one person who should remain untouched by shit, one can see why one must not indulge during refills.
We now move on to the main courses. By this time, I would expect a dinner party to be in full swing and ones guests should have relaxed completely. One should be on ones guard at letting matters degenerate at this point! I recently attended a party in Lanarkshire where the first shit was flung before I had taken a mouthful of my (quite delicious) Venison Foristier, with guests throwing their faeces at each other continually until the second course was cleared away. Whilst I make no direct criticism of this (everyone involved had a marvellous time) such wild abandon is not to everyone’s tastes.
I would therefore propose the following; Flinging should recommence after the host has finished his first course and is satisfied that everyone present is aware of this fact. At this point the main body of shit throwing should commence, but must only last until the last guest has finished eating! At this point everyone should be seated until the second course is served whereupon the shit throwing should resume. Upon finishing the second course, guests should once again be seated until the end of dessert.
I must be very firm about the following point; absolutely no shit should be thrown during dessert. This is a tradition that dates back to the time of William of Orange, when the Catholic populace expressed their silent hopes of rebellion by throwing shit during a dessert in which the Orange fruit featured heavily.
After dessert in concluded, I would suggest a short recess during which guests can use the bowls of warm water provided by the host in conjunction with their napkins to remove the thickest of the shit from their hands. Finally we have the brandy and cigars. By this point, all ladies present will have adjourned to the lounge, leaving the gentlemen to scrape their colons clean of the last of their waste product. This should be smeared in the face of the gentleman to the left (in deference to George II) and upon concluding, the evenings shit throwing is complete.
In finishing, I would like to say that I hope that this guide will be of use for all those thinking of hosting a dinner party and thank you all for your gentle encouragement.
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
I Love 1984
Does everyone have a favourite book? A book that they read and re-read year in year out? That is spiritually and emotionally nourishing and rewarding, and that provides fresh insights every time into both oneself and the world around? In news that will come as a surprise to precisely no one who knows me and my endlessly paranoid mindset, my favourite book of all time is 1984 by George Orwell. And yesterday, I finished reading it for something like the 13th or 14th time. I've read it once a year since I was a precocious and arrogant teen. It remained my annual treat as I grew into a pretentious and arrogant student. My development into a pompous and arrogant twentysomething was accompanied with readings once every 12 months. And now, as a presumptuous and arrogant thirtysomething, it's still my bible when it comes to informing my thought processes. But is the book, written as a post-war warning about a totalitarian menace long since discredited and dismantled, and set in a future that is now our past, still in any way relevant? Or is my constant referral and re-referral to it just so much pseudo-highbrow headwank?
For those (hopefully few) of you who don't know, 1984 concerns itself with the life and thoughts of Winston Smith. He is a citizen of Oceana, a totalitarian state ruled by The Party. He lives in London, the chief city of what is now referred to as Airstrip One. A lot of language now in everyday use has its roots in 1984. Big Brother, for example, was created by Orwell (along with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). The Thought Police receive their debut mention in terminology in 1984. Somewhat more worryingly, the idea of a controlled reality created by a select few and imposed on the majority was discussed in unflinching detail here. Why disturbing? Well, compare the words of O'Brien in 1984;
"O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We control reality because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it."
With the comment that a senior aide to that lovable scamp Dubya made to Ron Suskind, a journalist for the New York Times, in 2004;
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
To me, those words read as something alarmingly similar to the triumphant insanity that is shat into Winston Smith's brain by O'Brien This alone would seem to serve as proof of the relevance of 1984; that those in power can say, without a hint of irony or self awareness, things that Orwell wrote pretty much for the shock value of having an authoritarian figure say them. Does that mean then that we are living in a similar state to the bleak hell that Winston is eventually destroyed by?
Another major feature of the society that Winston Smith finds himself in is the lack of accountability, and the habitual falsification of figures to prove that those in power are unerringly correct about everything at all times. Indeed, Winston's job is (despite his growing hatred of The Party, and the almost unconscious desire to rebel) to falsify information that has appeared in the media. Now, I will freely admit that we are perhaps not quite at that stage yet; in 1984, there is no one to offer up any opposition to or disbelief of the figures that are continually changed. In our society, whenever the Government produces figures about immigration to say that hardly anyone is entering the country, it can be guaranteed that some faintly right-wing group will produce utterly different figures proving that our nation is overrun with dirty foreigners who want to have sex with our roadsigns. Whenever a New Labour drone tries to triumphantly claim that the NHS is in great shape, we invariably hear from the Unions that the NHS is being stripped and raped by profit-hungry Public-Private partnerships.
So we can see that our leaders don't quite get away with making up bullshit figures and facts to prove that they're perfect. However…am I really the only person who is disturbed at how often they still try? We have become so used to those in government telling us lies, damned lies, and statistics that we are now conditioned to treat whatever pronouncement made in much the same way as one would treat a crippled Jimmy Carr; something to be laughed at and then ignored. Although the methods used to achieve it differ from those in 1984, I would argue that our government has gone out of their way to ensure that they don't have to answer to those who elect them. The continual use of smoke and mirrors to present their figures in such a way to make them seem correct, and our subsequent lack of interest in what we assume to be their lies has already meant that they can do pretty much what they want because we just don't care, and don't feel we can make a difference. You don't agree? Look at what happens on those rare occasions that an issue arises that does excite public interest. The Iraq war was opposed by hundreds of thousands of people, and there were protests all over the country. And what happened? They were given a collective pat on the head, told they didn't understand, and why didn't they all go home and leave the important work to the grownups?
And what has this lack of accountability done to the government? Well…ask yourself this; when was the last time that you can think of something done by the government that wasn't either a knee-jerk reaction pandering to a frightened and ignorant middle England, or something that was an out-and-out attempt to enrich themselves? I genuinely can only think of one piece of legislation in the last 5 years that was for the benefit of the majority rather than something to curtail freedoms and benefit the ruling class (for the record, it's the increase in Statutory Maternity and Adoption Pay periods; new mothers and those who adopt now get an extra 3 paid months off). Any government elected in this country seems to now have the maintenance of their power as their first priority, and they have no fear of answering to an electorate in their efforts to do so.
However, there is more to the continual relevance of 1984 than mere commentary on what power does to the soul of those who wield it. For instance, the book makes reference to the media (such as it is). It talks of tatty tabloids pumping out sport, lottery numbers, and gossip for the benefit of the Proles. The Proles are the lumpen majority of people who are kept docile and satisfied by a conscious effort to keep them ignorant. I would contend that this view of the Proles is exactly the same view that most in the mainstream media have of their audience. How else can one explain the continued existence of Heat magazine? If ever there was a magazine that encouraged its readership to become obsessed with banalities and nonentities then this is it.
My hatred for scandal rags aside, the implicit suggestion in 1984 is that the media are complicit in keeping the Party in power. Whilst the Party falsify the information that really does matter a damn (news of the war, political figures, statistics on everything from immigration to production), the media ensure that this falsification goes pretty much unnoticed anyway, because it bombards it's readership with fluff (at this point I have to make clear that I swear I'm not as humourless as this probably makes me sound. As my vast expenditure on ladmags will prove, I think there is a place in the media for fluff. It's just that…well, does it have to be the dominating and overriding concern?).
As an example of this, I'd return to opposition to the Iraq war for a moment; I've already mentioned the strength of Anti-War feeling, and how completely it has been ignored by the government. Yet we do have anti-war elements in the mainstream media, and they will all go out of their way to report on anything that would bolster their cause, right? Right?
Then how come in Chicago a gentleman named Malachi Ritscher was, on 3rd November, able to douse himself in petrol and turn himself into a patiently-sitting human fireball in protest against the war? You've not heard of him? Not really surprising; you'll have to scour the media for mention of his name (even in supposedly Anti-War media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, the Mirror etc). However, if you want to find out who was evicted from I'm a Celebrity last night, or if you're keen to know some of the details behind Pamela Anderson's divorce from Kid Rock…well, it's not exactly difficult to come by that information, is it?
The final point I'd like to make in this increasingly frantic and mildly outlandish attempt to make everyone as paranoid as I am concerns the fate of Winston Smith himself. I've talked of how parallels can be drawn between the corrupting influence of power as described in 1984, along with the role of the media in keeping the Proles in their rightful place as doughfaced, mouthbreathing brain donors who clap with glee at the sight of a Z-list celebrity being humiliated on live TV. But what about the parallels between the actual human beings in 1984 and the likes of you and I today?
At the end of 1984, Winston has been utterly broken by the tortures inflicted on him. However, although the Party are triumphant, the only thing they have achieved is complete dominance over a washed out old drunk, a man who obliterates himself with gin and who sits unthinkingly and unquestioningly at his unimportant desk in an unimportant job doing unimportant things to keep the despair at bay. It's quite difficult not to recognise a lot of ourselves in that if we're completely honest. There is a reason that we in the UK drink more than pretty much any other nation, and take more drugs than almost every other country. It's because we rarely feel in charge of our own destinies, or that we have any effective control over our own lives. Successive governments since the 60s have certainly succeeded in making themselves less accountable, but it's been at the expense of the gradual debasement of the very people they want to have power over. More than any other comparison between 1984 and today’s world, I find that the one between the fate of Winston and our own fates in a world that has done it's best to remove all hope that we can ever make a difference to be the most pertinent and the most frightening.
Anyway, if I've depressed the hell out of you with this rant then please console yourself with a thought; it'll be at least a year before I read 1984 again, which means 12 more months until I inflict something like this one you.
For those (hopefully few) of you who don't know, 1984 concerns itself with the life and thoughts of Winston Smith. He is a citizen of Oceana, a totalitarian state ruled by The Party. He lives in London, the chief city of what is now referred to as Airstrip One. A lot of language now in everyday use has its roots in 1984. Big Brother, for example, was created by Orwell (along with the phrase "Big Brother is watching you"). The Thought Police receive their debut mention in terminology in 1984. Somewhat more worryingly, the idea of a controlled reality created by a select few and imposed on the majority was discussed in unflinching detail here. Why disturbing? Well, compare the words of O'Brien in 1984;
"O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We control reality because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it."
With the comment that a senior aide to that lovable scamp Dubya made to Ron Suskind, a journalist for the New York Times, in 2004;
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
To me, those words read as something alarmingly similar to the triumphant insanity that is shat into Winston Smith's brain by O'Brien This alone would seem to serve as proof of the relevance of 1984; that those in power can say, without a hint of irony or self awareness, things that Orwell wrote pretty much for the shock value of having an authoritarian figure say them. Does that mean then that we are living in a similar state to the bleak hell that Winston is eventually destroyed by?
Another major feature of the society that Winston Smith finds himself in is the lack of accountability, and the habitual falsification of figures to prove that those in power are unerringly correct about everything at all times. Indeed, Winston's job is (despite his growing hatred of The Party, and the almost unconscious desire to rebel) to falsify information that has appeared in the media. Now, I will freely admit that we are perhaps not quite at that stage yet; in 1984, there is no one to offer up any opposition to or disbelief of the figures that are continually changed. In our society, whenever the Government produces figures about immigration to say that hardly anyone is entering the country, it can be guaranteed that some faintly right-wing group will produce utterly different figures proving that our nation is overrun with dirty foreigners who want to have sex with our roadsigns. Whenever a New Labour drone tries to triumphantly claim that the NHS is in great shape, we invariably hear from the Unions that the NHS is being stripped and raped by profit-hungry Public-Private partnerships.
So we can see that our leaders don't quite get away with making up bullshit figures and facts to prove that they're perfect. However…am I really the only person who is disturbed at how often they still try? We have become so used to those in government telling us lies, damned lies, and statistics that we are now conditioned to treat whatever pronouncement made in much the same way as one would treat a crippled Jimmy Carr; something to be laughed at and then ignored. Although the methods used to achieve it differ from those in 1984, I would argue that our government has gone out of their way to ensure that they don't have to answer to those who elect them. The continual use of smoke and mirrors to present their figures in such a way to make them seem correct, and our subsequent lack of interest in what we assume to be their lies has already meant that they can do pretty much what they want because we just don't care, and don't feel we can make a difference. You don't agree? Look at what happens on those rare occasions that an issue arises that does excite public interest. The Iraq war was opposed by hundreds of thousands of people, and there were protests all over the country. And what happened? They were given a collective pat on the head, told they didn't understand, and why didn't they all go home and leave the important work to the grownups?
And what has this lack of accountability done to the government? Well…ask yourself this; when was the last time that you can think of something done by the government that wasn't either a knee-jerk reaction pandering to a frightened and ignorant middle England, or something that was an out-and-out attempt to enrich themselves? I genuinely can only think of one piece of legislation in the last 5 years that was for the benefit of the majority rather than something to curtail freedoms and benefit the ruling class (for the record, it's the increase in Statutory Maternity and Adoption Pay periods; new mothers and those who adopt now get an extra 3 paid months off). Any government elected in this country seems to now have the maintenance of their power as their first priority, and they have no fear of answering to an electorate in their efforts to do so.
However, there is more to the continual relevance of 1984 than mere commentary on what power does to the soul of those who wield it. For instance, the book makes reference to the media (such as it is). It talks of tatty tabloids pumping out sport, lottery numbers, and gossip for the benefit of the Proles. The Proles are the lumpen majority of people who are kept docile and satisfied by a conscious effort to keep them ignorant. I would contend that this view of the Proles is exactly the same view that most in the mainstream media have of their audience. How else can one explain the continued existence of Heat magazine? If ever there was a magazine that encouraged its readership to become obsessed with banalities and nonentities then this is it.
My hatred for scandal rags aside, the implicit suggestion in 1984 is that the media are complicit in keeping the Party in power. Whilst the Party falsify the information that really does matter a damn (news of the war, political figures, statistics on everything from immigration to production), the media ensure that this falsification goes pretty much unnoticed anyway, because it bombards it's readership with fluff (at this point I have to make clear that I swear I'm not as humourless as this probably makes me sound. As my vast expenditure on ladmags will prove, I think there is a place in the media for fluff. It's just that…well, does it have to be the dominating and overriding concern?).
As an example of this, I'd return to opposition to the Iraq war for a moment; I've already mentioned the strength of Anti-War feeling, and how completely it has been ignored by the government. Yet we do have anti-war elements in the mainstream media, and they will all go out of their way to report on anything that would bolster their cause, right? Right?
Then how come in Chicago a gentleman named Malachi Ritscher was, on 3rd November, able to douse himself in petrol and turn himself into a patiently-sitting human fireball in protest against the war? You've not heard of him? Not really surprising; you'll have to scour the media for mention of his name (even in supposedly Anti-War media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, the Mirror etc). However, if you want to find out who was evicted from I'm a Celebrity last night, or if you're keen to know some of the details behind Pamela Anderson's divorce from Kid Rock…well, it's not exactly difficult to come by that information, is it?
The final point I'd like to make in this increasingly frantic and mildly outlandish attempt to make everyone as paranoid as I am concerns the fate of Winston Smith himself. I've talked of how parallels can be drawn between the corrupting influence of power as described in 1984, along with the role of the media in keeping the Proles in their rightful place as doughfaced, mouthbreathing brain donors who clap with glee at the sight of a Z-list celebrity being humiliated on live TV. But what about the parallels between the actual human beings in 1984 and the likes of you and I today?
At the end of 1984, Winston has been utterly broken by the tortures inflicted on him. However, although the Party are triumphant, the only thing they have achieved is complete dominance over a washed out old drunk, a man who obliterates himself with gin and who sits unthinkingly and unquestioningly at his unimportant desk in an unimportant job doing unimportant things to keep the despair at bay. It's quite difficult not to recognise a lot of ourselves in that if we're completely honest. There is a reason that we in the UK drink more than pretty much any other nation, and take more drugs than almost every other country. It's because we rarely feel in charge of our own destinies, or that we have any effective control over our own lives. Successive governments since the 60s have certainly succeeded in making themselves less accountable, but it's been at the expense of the gradual debasement of the very people they want to have power over. More than any other comparison between 1984 and today’s world, I find that the one between the fate of Winston and our own fates in a world that has done it's best to remove all hope that we can ever make a difference to be the most pertinent and the most frightening.
Anyway, if I've depressed the hell out of you with this rant then please console yourself with a thought; it'll be at least a year before I read 1984 again, which means 12 more months until I inflict something like this one you.
Welcome to Lights Out
Hola,
I've been writing rants about whatever my kitten-like attention span has been able to focus on for about 5 years now. For some reason (definitely not sloth...) I've never got round to blogging 'em. This is my first tentative step in remedying that.
I'll be posting up all of the rants I've written over the coming weeks. I'll also add a few notes of commentary; looking back at some of the things I've written, I find myself wondering what the hell I was thinking.
I hope you enjoy what is to come!
Cheers,
Light
I've been writing rants about whatever my kitten-like attention span has been able to focus on for about 5 years now. For some reason (definitely not sloth...) I've never got round to blogging 'em. This is my first tentative step in remedying that.
I'll be posting up all of the rants I've written over the coming weeks. I'll also add a few notes of commentary; looking back at some of the things I've written, I find myself wondering what the hell I was thinking.
I hope you enjoy what is to come!
Cheers,
Light
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